Our First Asheville Snow

Ah, the first snowfall of the year. That crisp smell in the air as your boots crunch satisfyingly into the grains of ice sliding against each other. Dogs frolic and the yells of red-cheeked children drift over hills made for sledding. At home it is cozy but not too warm to wear a lovely rag sweater, and no one worries about the cost of heating.

Those who have seen my reaction to the first 50-degree day of autumn are sniggering right now. Those who have not experienced my five-month whining spree that is called winter should know: I hate cold weather.

It wasn't always so.

My freshman year at Brown I quickly discarded the bulky knee-length down coat my father bought for me at our trip to the L.L. Bean in Freeport, Maine. We went there en route to Rhode Island as a way of stocking up on the winter essentials a California girl lacked in the days before you could order all that stuff on the internet. A puffy, lavender L.L. Bean knee-length down coat, I quickly realized, marked you either as a weak senior citizen or, just as bad, a weak kid from California whom everyone would tease for being unfamiliar with cold weather. Besides, we were young and stupid and frequently drunk, so we didn't mind a little frostbite now and then.

By senior year, I was so savvy in the ways of winter that my only reaction to the first big snowfall when I was living off-campus and therefore did not have miserable student workers to shovel my front walk was to pull on a second pair of socks to wear with my penny loafers. By the time I made it to campus so many people had cried, "WHAT ARE YOU WEARING ON YOUR FEET?" that I realized I had moved beyond proving my mettle back into winter stupidity. I decided class was less important than heading home in shame and caught the next bus to Boston, where I purchased my still-beloved Timberlands and discovered the joy of warm, dry feet.

After college, I spent two years living in Boston and feeling so abjectly poverty-stricken that the idea of spending $60 on a month-long unlimited pass for the T (the Boston public transport system) sent me into a paroxysm of Ramen noodle dinners and begging my mother for new socks. I decided to forgo the T-pass until the weather forced me to give up my free walk to work so many times that I ended up spending at least $60 a month in T fare anyhow. I never came close. Instead, I braved the frozen tundra of the Boston Common bundled in a long houndstooth wool coat with huge shoulder pads draped over two extra sweaters, long underwear, my trusty Timberlands, red rabbit fur earmuffs, and thick mittens. The first ten minutes of my work day were spent stripping down to normal office wear in a cramped bathroom stall. I don't recall how I handled lunch.

Gradually, I moved to milder winters -- Manhattan, where I vaguely recall feeling the frozen pavement quite plainly through my thin black ankle boots; Washington, D.C., where my body retained so much heat from my early morning workouts on the Stairmaster that I made it to work without any appreciable suffering; Williamsburg, Virginia, home of my too-cool J.Crew barn jacket that swung fetchingly when worn open to the elements with a thin but stylish scarf to provide a modicum of chest covering.

And then I became an old woman.

Rather, my hands took on the persona of an old crone, one of those people whose very touch feels like frozen marble. I became a sort of modified street person, pausing over open vents in the street and searching out indoor sources of heat where I would could rub my hands together muttering with delight.

I had discovered both the bane of my I'm-as-tough-as-you winter posturing and my great excuse for looking pinched and grinch-like when anyone talks about the pleasures of skiing.

I have Reynaud's Syndrome, a condition diagnosed by a cardiologist friend who caught me cursing as I burned my hands on those pocket warmers they sell to hunters and other cold weather enthusiasts. Reynaud's Syndrome is a rheumatological condition that affects about two percent of women -- just enough to prove I'm not crazy. The gist of it is that under certain conditions -- most notably when one's hands get cold -- the blood vessels in one's hands constrict. Which, if you stop to think about it, means that when my hands get cold my hands get even colder. I consider this the physical equivalent of eating more ice cream when you are feeling fat.

How cold do my hands get when they get cold?

Crying because it is necessary to grip the cold steering wheel in order to operate an automobile cold.

Sobbing while running my hands under warm water after walking the dog cold.

Actual nerve damage cold, I discovered after visiting a rheumatologist who used a cool scope to look right through my fingernails.

One way to deal with Reynaud's Syndrome is to take vaso-dilators -- pills that expand your blood vessels, thus counteracting the Reynaud's symptoms and generally making you feel warmer. This solution, I discovered, is less than ideal if you already have low blood pressure and are therefore at risk of fainting dead away when it is lowered further. For a time I took the vaso-dilators anyhow, but the only time I could get away with it was right before getting into bed where it didn't matter if I felt woozy and disoriented.

The ideal solution for Reynauds is to live somewhere without a winter. I did this. The problem is, I did it with someone who likes winter. Further, he likes to point out pesky facts like the insane cost of real estate in Southern California and the alarming health hazard posed by the pollution from the Port of Long Beach. And he takes me to Asheville in the spring and summer when it is lovely and warm and I forget the days when I wandered my house in St. Louis wrapped in my bulky down comforter and skipping dinner because the kitchen was by far the coldest room in the house.

To my credit, I haven't cried once at the prospect of winter this year. By the time I left St. Louis, I spent every morning starting October 1 in a panic over the impending cold. Here in Asheville, I gamely bundle both myself and The Boy in warm layers of modern fabrics so we can accompany Hubby and the hounds on their morning run in the park a couple blocks away. I wear delicious and attractive fleece-lined shoes that I bought at Discount Shoes on Route 191. I even got myself the kind of wool cap that looks cute on 25-year-old hippie-chic chicks and looked cute on me just once, in the store where I bought it.

So I didn't panic the other day when one of the teachers at The Boy's school asked me if I had seen the flurries right before I dropped him off. "Flurries? Really?" I asked, proud that there was no rise in my tone, no catch to my voice.

Two hours later, they called me to tell me he had a temperature of 100.3 and anything over 100 earns him an afternoon at home with Mommy and banishment from school for the next 24 hours. This policy makes perfect sense when it comes to other munchkins sharing their viruses with with my precious bundle. But when I know The Boy is merely teething and those thermometers they use are inaccurate anyhow, it strikes me as a deeply unfair rule.

I noticed a few white grains flying through the air when I crossed the street to the school building. They could have been tiny pieces of styrofoam escaped from someone's moving boxes.

But when I came back outside a few minutes later, The Boy in my arms, I recognized them for what they were. "Look, your first snow," I said with a carefully cheery tone designed to avoid passing judgment on the things in life that The Boy is entitled to judge for himself.

We went to the toy store for the aids I felt were necessary to keep both The Boy and me occupied for the long, school-less, park-less afternoon. We sat on the floor and played with the other children and The Boy ogled the train set that is years too advanced for him, and it felt so holiday-like and cozy that I didn't mind when we walked outside again how much the density of the tiny white stones of ice had increased or how they bit into my face when I headed into them.

The Boy minded, and informed me in no uncertain terms that when you are rearranging straps to get a car seat ready to accommodate a small boy you are not to hold said boy out the open door of the car to be pelted by icy snow.

We did not arrive home to drifts of white on our front steps and a brightly lit living room with hounds curled up by the fireplace. This was not the kind of snow that sticks even if the ground is cold enough. We weren't surrounded by fluffy white flakes you catch on your tongue. In fact, it all felt a bit like standing too close to a shaved ice machine in great need of a tune-up.

Still, it was warm inside, and The Boy quite enjoyed his new set of toys with wheels -- car, truck, and airplane. He wasn't all that interested in the stacking blocks, so I fit them back into their box and put them aside for a Christmas present.

That's the nice thing about having a child who's not yet a year old -- he doesn't care that one of his Christmas presents is nothing more than a recycled snowy afternoon toy.

And that's the nice thing about a snowy afternoon, even one as unpicturesque as this one was -- pair it with a little boy pushing a wooden car across the floor and you can remember the excitement of playing with something new, even the something new that is the first snowfall of the year.