anti:freeze

spyphone picture from the early hours of a snowstorm, taken with the Nokia 3650, from my balcony

In Iowa, this winter weather wouldn't impress me. Nineteen degrees on a January morning is downright cozy, compared to subzero nights and winds that burn the tiny cilia inside your nose. There were days when my lungs ached so hard I thought the capillaries might shatter. Little shards of glass in your chest. That's winter in Iowa.

But here in Portland, the snow and freezing rain are new again. I find myself huddling inside, drinking tea, making plans for home-cooked soup. Yesterday, the radio announcer said conditions are similar to 1996, when heavy snow was followed by warm air. Snow melted too fast on Mt. Hood and the hills, flooding rivers and threatening the downtown waterfront. I live on the waterfront.

Was 1996 the last time it snowed this hard in Portland? It seems like a lifetime ago. Back then, I was living with a boyfriend in Iowa City. He had grown up in Oregon, so midwestern winters were exotic, dazzling even. He was obsessed with homemade snow, boiling pots full of water on the stove, then running outside and flinging the pots into the air. The boiling water transformed into flakes. He did this over and over while I made fun of him from the couch. When that got boring, he poured cold water on the back steps and watched it freeze. It was worse than a Nickelodeon show - the ones where they teach you how to make Play-Doh with flour and salt, or conduct electricity using toenail clippers and a fishtank.

I remember one of his friends called from Portland and shouted into the telephone. "I stood on a bridge and touched a stick to the river! I touched it!" I imagined water licking the front doors of skyscrapers, elevators plunging into flooded underground parking garages, cars swimming around in blue water. Venice on our own west coast.

This morning, my husband and I watched the snow from our living room window. "We would have just gone out back in Iowa," he said. "It's ridiculous to stay cooped up indoors."

I thought about all the long treks across the University of Iowa campus, my scarf wrapped high around my face, my legs stiff inside three layers - thermal underwear, tights, jeans. "Let's go smash a snowman," I said. "You know, the really cheesy kind. With a carrot for the nose."

He smiled. "The kind made by people who wish they lived in a catalog?"

Exactly.

Only an Iowan is sufficiently bitter about winter to fantasize about beating up defenseless snowmen. We're still Iowans at heart, even if we do wimp out in freezing weather.

PS: Just so you know, we left the poor snowmen alone. We behaved ourselves.