Minnesota Amnesia

Here we are again in late winter; the time every year that my friends and I routinely raise the question as if it was a new thought: "Why do we live here?" I overhear conversations in public places in which the theme is "how I've always felt spiritually drawn to Southern California (Arizona, Mexico, Belize, Bali, etc.) and I will probably be relocating there in the next few years. Yes, really. Pretty much for sure." As March approaches, and I stare ahead at more than two more months of frosty weather the full gravity of my situation falls heavily on my heart. A slow rage of betrayal builds as I realize all that I forgot during the summer months. Why do I forget something this important and remain in this inhospitable climate? I blame it on Minnesota Amnesia.

Nobody in their right mind would live here. It's too cold. Nobody consciously chooses to live six months out of the year in physical pain and limitation, our shoulders hunched rigidly into a lifted position until mid-May. When I moved here from Chicago twenty years ago I thought it was for the summer. I planned on moving back within a year at the most. Chicago isn't much warmer but winter is a good six weeks shorter there. I didn't return because something conspired to keep me here. Everyone was so nice, but it was more than that. I became afflicted with Minnesota Amnesia, and so here I am: with a husband, a career, two children --- and six months of winter. Alas! Why didn't I move away before my oldest kid was a teenager and I still had a chance?

Nature has ways of tricking us so we repeat behaviors that she has decided are pro-survival for the species. Childbirth is one example. How many women have sworn in the middle of labor that we would never do this again? It's ridiculous---it hurts too much and it's too hard, and no one should have to do it. But then our baby is placed in our arms, and a flood of love and pride and pleasure washes in and we think... Oh well--- this is worth it. Before long we believe it wasn't so bad. We don't remember the pain in it's true proportions until the next time we're in the middle of labor and we think: Now how did I ever let this happen again? We forgot because we had one of Nature's little bouts of amnesia.

Perhaps Nature in her wisdom deemed it necessary for some of the population to live in the Northern spots on the globe. Nobody would freely choose this so she invented a form of forgetfulness that causes us to dismiss how bad winter really is every year. We stay here for yet another round, and we forget how bad it is year after year and generation after generation. We forget that you can't have a nice hair do and be warm at the same time. It's fashion or freezing. Personally I usually go for the bad hair under my warm hat. We forget how you have to leave extra time to scrape off your car before getting to an appointment. We forget about how civil language deteriorates if you have to walk more than half a block in forty below wind chill. We forget about the kind of cold that actually comes after your body heat so aggressively....like it wants you. We forget how in late winter the snow begins to look like someone left dirty laundry all over the place, and how the ice thaws and re-freezes in ever blacker and ever more bizarre forms until you feel that you are walking a weird moonscape. We forget about pot holes and then we forget about road repairs.

Maybe we forget because we're charmed by the changes. It's cold for six months but it still has a cycle that we experience with affection. Like Native Americans named their moon cycles, I name these times through the Minnesota winter. After the blaze of autumn colors we gently enter The Brown Time. So empty and restful. A pause between seasons. Then there is the First Little Snowflake Time when we expand our chests with pride in the crisp air and are grateful for the chance to live in a place with four seasons. Christmas comes twinkling along, and everything looks like charming movie sets for a while. We are still murmuring positive little pep talks to ourselves as we bundle up and make our way out the door to the car. "This isn't so bad...I can handle this..." we are fostering the charming delusion that winter is 'not so bad.'

The first hint of discouragement usually begins in the post-holiday weeks of January when it is Winter Cold and Flu Time. Late January calls for more than pep talks, as we collectively don masks of brave determination for a full month. Then it is February, The Time for Serious Geographical Reevaluation. March is The Endurance Contest but it is alleviated by the growing light. We have such a relationship to light and dark here in the North! I love that in spite of myself. April is the month of Early Spring Poignancy. You catch heartbreaking glimpses of the imminent possibility of rebirth... the old woman tenderly combing the edges of her grass with a rake even though most of the yard is covered with blotchy snow.. skaters and bikers in shorts with blue legs zigzagging between ice patches down the sidewalks around the lakes...things like that.

And then May comes in dewy glory and it is The Time of Foolish Grinning. People walk around smiling and laughing over nothing, and starting sentences with strangers that they don't even finish. Everyone tirelessly comments on the lovely weather. Minnesota Amnesia is setting in, and I watch helplessly and wonder if it is sad or lucky. Then I willingly go to my fate in good company by celebrating Winter's demise at the May Day Parade and Festival in Powderhorn Park. I have cast my lot here in the North among the indigenous peoples of South Minneapolis, and I know that we will banish the taste of winter once again this year in collective ecstasy. It's late winter now, and it's hard--- but May is coming and I'm a Minnesotan. I know that by July I will actually believe that winter was "not so bad." I guess I'll have to forgive Nature for making me forget.