May-November romance

It’s a beautiful late spring day, the kind that hints that summer is just around the corner. The morning’s cool start has burned off under a warm sun and my short walk has me thinking about iced tea in the shade.

But wait. This isn’t May. It’s mid-November. What the heck.

No wonder I’m confused. Back in Idaho, they’re celebrating the season’s first snowfall. Fireplaces are lit, trees have already blazed fiery red and orange and now are bare, and windows are shut tight til spring. The real spring. Which arrives in May when nighttime temperatures finally rise above freezing.

Here, the locals call this autumn, even though the trees have scarcely put any color on. The leaves, so used to long months of warmth, can only muster a resentful sickly yellow and dull rust before fluttering to the ground. My rose bush has bloomed again, thumbing its nose at the calendar.

Moving to a new state and a new climate zone changes how you live. While that seems obvious, the living of it is something else altogether. I walk to the mailbox without pulling on the fleece. Keep my sunglasses nearby. Ignore my sock drawer – it’s still sandals weather. Lunch at outdoor cafes.

My closet full of coats, cozied up to an equal number of scarves, made perfect sense in a state where there’s a progression of cold that ultimately goes bone-deep.

There are chilly days, cold days, snowy days, freezing blustery days, and unbelievably bone-chilling there-is-no-coat-warm-enough-days. Still, if I were still in Idaho, I’d join everyone else in looking forward to a good snow. Bring it on.

But now 600 miles away, I whittled my coat collection down to half a dozen, but only one is needed here. 

One light coat that is waterproof, living a lonely life in the closet.

Out with the snow shovels, out with the hats that cover my ears, out with the long underwear. I don’t even want to think about my poor boots, already missing companions tossed out in the move.

This is going to free up an awful lot of closet space.

How long do the comparisons of one home to another last? When will this just be November -- not 30 degrees-warmer-than-Idaho November? At what point is a new normal achieved?