The Natural Drug

I've recently moved someplace renowned for its bad weather. Or rather, for its lack of boring, pleasantly mild, nondescript indistinguishable weather.

During the summer it got hot enough to make you avoid the outdoors. Not unusual.

But the winter...

The winter weather is boisterous, playful, changing, vivid, and challenging. It gets cold enough for your fingers to hurt simply walking from the car to the apartment; winds howl down the plains, sliding along the ice; the snow piles up so rapidly that they don't even try to clear the roads down to pavement, and you have to learn to include sliding as part of turning corners; any ventilation crack is enough to make ice build up inside your window where the temperatures meet.

It isn't easy.

It's challenging.

It's invigorating.

I love being outside in weather like this. It gets my heart beating to be buffeted by winds, where I have to turn my back to the wind to catch my breath. It lifts my spirits to see the sky clogged with fat, fluffy flakes that keep coming, hour after hour, and the wind curls them into graceful drifts. I like seeing the dark, crystalline sky full of sparkling stars. I welcome the prickling in my nose as the hairs freeze, and my cheeks getting stiff and hard to move.

I enjoy nature. Give me a good hike in the woods, an outcropping over a lake to look from, the view from a mountain, a meandering day in a National Park. Now add in the danger that if you lay down, you could die. I've been on ski mountains, cold wind pulling at my clothes. But this is even better; despite being within walking distance of houses and civilization, there is a closer connection to nature. You are more directly involved than a minute or two sliding down the ski run.

With all the ways humans have tried to tame, eliminate, curb, and derail weather, it is refreshing to be in a place where they build tunnels between buildings, and raises bridges to allow ice floes to pass underneath. It makes you feel more alive than an illicit drug.

Cuckoo

I recently upended my life, and made a big move across country, finding much satisfaction and contentment in my new home.

I didn't go alone. I went with a friend, and at first it was just the two of us, and we were well matched and balanced. Then came the straggler.

She moved her son in with us, a thirteen year old boy. I had an instant family that I hadn't been counting on. It is a surreal way to get a family; no nine-month pregnancy, no lengthy adoption process, no prolonged court case. He wasn't here; and then he was.

And not happy about it.

I wish he would understand that there is an adjustment for both of us. No matter how much he curses, insults, and disobeys, it is still my job to get him to school healthy, clean, and prepared.

Why should I? Why should I care enough to bother? It wasn't what I signed up for. i could just as easily sit back and let the mother be the involved one, do the hard work and be the enforcer. Why am I even involved?

The irony comes from the fact that I wasn't allowed to do this for my own kid, wasn't allowed to be a daily parent, explore the joys and pitfalls of childhood, and watch him grow. I had a few hours on weekends. Now I'm helping keep another father away from his kid.

And it isn't even for someone grateful. It would be different if the child were happy to be here, but those insults...

I wonder what he will leave behind when he finally leaves the nest. Beautiful, lustrous feathers to keep us warm? Or a hard white mound of bird crap?