My brother sent both my sister and I a text this past week; it included a photo of wildflowers, recently bloomed in the yard outside his house, coated with a layer of snow on the colorful petals. His comment was simple: “Hey, I thought it was spring …”
My sister and I each texted back, with smiling emojis, because even though she and I are both now living in California, we remember those upstate New York springs. You could be at 75 degrees with sunshine one day and drop down by 40 degrees overnight and have a snowstorm blow in.
Even within the confines of the state, you could have a number of different weather scenarios on any given day. I remember one time in the spring when my sister was attending college on Long Island, she and several friends were heading to the beach while my brother and I some 200 miles to the north were shoveling six inches of new fallen snow off the sidewalk. And our storm that weekend couldn’t compare to the ‘lake effect’ snow they got in far western New York, coming off Lake Erie.
My weekly conversations with my dad now invariably include talk of the weather; we compare temperatures, rainfall, forecasts, etc.
In the fall we discuss the leaves; my dad said they didn’t have much color this past autumn and that’s unusual, there’s typically plenty of bright reds and oranges. Growing up, my parents would sometimes take all three of us kids on a Sunday drive after church for a tour of the leaves; we could get to Massachusetts within a couple of hours and even sneak into Vermont for a brief look at the colors. It was just a great way to spend a few hours together as a family, enjoying nature’s beauty. My brother is the middle child, my sister the oldest and I am the youngest; my sister and I were both born in December five years apart, and my brother was born in June, halfway between the two of us.
Somehow, we all managed to co-exist in the back seat of the car; even on long trips to visit family or on the leaf tours. We would make up games to play, looking for out of state license plates or each choosing a car color to keep track of and whoever got the most won. Not actually a prize, just bragging rights for that particular trip.
With Easter just around the corner, I am hoping New York can thaw out a little; although we definitely had more than one Easter egg hunt in the snow when I was a kid.
We also loved to listen for those ‘snow days’ announcements on the radio in the morning during the winter and early spring to see if we got an unexpected day off from school.
It’s interesting to me how the mind works. I vividly remember the last big snowstorm we got before I made the move westward; it was one of those huge ‘100-year events’ that literally shut everything down. That’s the one I remember the most, even though I did my fair share of driving in whiteout and icy conditions during my young adulthood.
Guess I must choose to block those other unpleasant snow driving memories out. Just like when I was putting together the special rodeo section earlier this month; almost all the photos from last year that we put in were of the mud and the slop. Honestly, I didn’t even remember it had rained for rodeo last year. Simply blocked it out. Doesn’t matter; rodeo, like spring, is going to happen around here, whether it’s raining or triple digits, the show must go on.
Marg Jackson is editor of The Oakdale Leader, The Escalon Times and The Riverbank News. She may be reached at mjackson@oakdaleleader.com or by calling 209-847-3021.
