Fighting the winter blues

Today, the first snow flakes fell on Holland. And with it, so did my spirits.

While I love the summers in Michigan spent outside in the beautiful weather and post card pretty beaches, I am not a fan of the other five to six months of the year. The time of year when the temperature plummets, the skies turn gloomy grey and the snow starts to fall. It's almost like Mother Nature punishes us — if we want perfect summers, we have to pay for it by suffering half the year. While some residents might get excited for a winter full of hunting, cross country skiing and snow blowing the driveway, all I want to do is stay in bed in my sweats.

I know I shouldn't whine so much — it's Michigan, it snows, I should be used to it by now. But I'm not. I'm stubborn that way.

But what I really don't like about the cold season is I lose my motivation to exercise. When my spirits drop, so does that peppy spirit to jump out of bed and hit the gym. My gloomy, Eeyore persona bleeds over into other aspects of my life — I get down on myself for what I eat and how I look in that bulky sweater.

Believing in ghosts

Ghosts -- they come in all shapes and sizes and, yes, I do believe in them. I have felt the sadness and the heaviness at Gettysburg and Arlington Cemetery and a cold chill go down my back when I took that final walk into my gramps’ house to pack up his life. I even feel the presence of the ghost living in my dishwasher; I named his Terrance. But the strongest ghost I ever felt was the ghost of my former self.

The summer before my freshman year of high school, I packed up my room and moved from my Baltimore suburb to Michigan. That was my first move, but it wouldn’t be my last. Of all the times since then that I have packed up and changed zip codes, the first one has stuck with me the most. 

Maybe it was because I had to grow up and say goodbye to my childhood home or maybe because it was the furthest distance. I’m not sure. But whatever the reason, that life changing moment has stuck with me to this day.

Hurricane Floyd

I have always had an obsession with thunderstorms. Ever since I was a little girl, I remember the butterflies that would instantly inhabit my stomach the minute the weatherman predicted a summer downpour. I would spend the entire day outside with my neck craned up, waiting for the first drops to fall.  The minute they did, all the neighborhood kids would book it inside while I headed for the cul-de-sac in front of my house. With my arms spread out to either side, I would spin in the hot summer rain until I couldn’t stand anymore. Then I would lie on the pavement and watch the rain come shooting down on me. Looking back, lying in the middle of the street probably wasn’t the safest idea I ever had. 

           

The weather was always hot and sticky growing up near the Maryland Seaboard, creating a pressure system that always invited thunderstorms to venture down towards us. The best part was, I never knew where they would come from. The pilot side of my dad taught me how to watch for fronts and different kinds of clouds. I was the only six-year-old who knew how storms traveled from west to east and that different clouds sat at different elevations. I didn’t know which Power Rangers had which powers, but I knew a cumulus cloud’s base hovered around 6,500 feet. I knew the jet streams would bring the storm clouds over our house from the backyard to the front. 

But living close enough to the coast meant that hurricanes could whirl in from the east and catch me off guard. I loved that surprise. Whenever my neighbors started boarding up their windows and charging extra batteries, I would sit and stare out our screen door, waiting for the dark clouds to roll in. Every so often I would glance at the floor at my retriever, Bailey. She hated storms, so whenever one would get close, she would start getting nervous and I would start getting excited.

           

Hiking in Cunningham Falls

To this day, I still am not one hundred percent sure how I got blamed for what happened. I usually am the one who ends up with the accusing finger pointed in her face, and I long ago accepted that as one of my many character flaws. But I still can’t quite figure out how the girl with the broken foot got blamed for hitchhiking on the highway.


A tradition at Wilde Lake Middle School was the class trip to Summit Lake every June. We were middle schoolers so we had graduated to the next level of field trip, a three-day excursion without our parents. I don’t remember a single kid who wasn’t excited about that. 


Just like everyone else, I was looking forward to the trip. Three days of hiking, s’mores and scary stories sounded like heaven. But I was even more excited that my mother agreed to let me go. Two weeks before the trip, I had an unfortunate accident with a flight of stairs and a student who had revenge in his eye during a fire drill. He hadn’t been a fan of mine since I mildly embarrassed him during a softball game. Could I help it that he pitched one right down the center? Or the fact that my bat made perfect contact with the ball, sending it back the way it came? No, not anymore than I could help it that the ball hit him square in the groin, or the fact that he fell to the ground crying while I rounded the bases.

The pyro field

“So, when was the last time you stripped a wire successfully?”

That was all he wrote.  Not a “hi” or a “how are classes going?” Instead, an 11-word text message reminder to keep my skill sharp during the offseason.  That’s my dad.

While my dad and I are close, we’ve never had a typical relationship.  Raising daughters is never easy for any guy, but he did the best he could.  At an early age, my sister and I could outhit and out spit any boy on the baseball field, and we had to be able to flip open a pocket knife one-handed.  If not, we weren’t allowed to walk to kindergarten without him.  He tried his best to come to every one of my swim meets and would whistle so loud I could hear him under water.      

As I got older and I started getting interested in things he couldn’t understand--like Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Spanish — the unspoken rule was he was not the “go-to” guy for homework help.  When it came to boys, if we didn’t talk about it then the problem didn’t exist.  As long as they didn’t call the house or come over, he wouldn’t have to give the “dad speech” or pace the house waiting for me to get home.  We both preferred it that way.

While this may sound a tad odd, the best way my dad and I related to each other, and still do, is on the pyro field.  Since the 1980s, my dad has been a volunteer performer for an airshow act called The Tora Bomb Squad.  He travels the country shooting off carpet bombs and walls of fire while Japanese Zeros, B-2 Bombers, and A-10s zoom overhead. 

My recurring dream

“Oh crap.  Stephen, can you go see who’s at the counter?  I have to get make these changes before the pages gets sent off to the printers,” I bellow from my desk. I know customers always come first, but if I don’t meet this deadline, my publisher is going to kill me.

It’s another humid day in Baltimore, so I have the windows open to keep them from fogging up.  It helps regulate the room but it does nothing to help my already messy office. The breeze off the Chesapeake has sent a few rough drafts on the floor and a post-it note out into the lobby. I can see it dancing its way towards the bookshelves housing a collection of local authors that I’ve published.

I can hear Stephen greet the customer in the lobby. I try desperately to tune out his conversation and focus on the page in front of me, but four words from the stranger grab my attention instantly. “Is my Hannah here?”

“Uh, just a sec,” Stephen says hesitantly. “Hannah, I think you’re gonna want to come out here.  She’s looking for you.” My curiosity instantly piques. I know those words, but I don’t know that voice.