brrrrr...it's cold!

For all my friends in the lovely, lush, green valley called the Willamette, I want to warn you that my children would never survive a summer there.  I think our lowest temperature this week has been 82, and that's during the coldest part of night.  Summer is creeping steadily closer, and I can feel the anxious anticipation for the days when the air conditioner is never turned off and popsicles melt if you are foolish enough to think that you can transport them safely home in the middle of the afternoon.

Last fall when popsicles went on sale I bought over 40 boxes or about 480 popsicles.  I am down to my last 2 boxes and summer hasn't even officially started.  But I digress from the main point of this post.

We decided to have a weekend of swimming with the girls.  We wanted to make sure that they were thoroughly reacquainted with the concept of pools and water and life jackets, so at around 6:00pm on Friday we took them to the pool.  (I like to make our motives sound so unselfish, but the real reason for going was because I could barely walk and couldn't stand up straight, and we thought some weightless floating in water would do my back a lot of good.  We were right.)  It was a balmy night: about 86F.  Perfect weather with the sun finally beginning it's evening descent where the rays aren't so harsh and the risk of sunburn is negligible.

The girls splashed and played for about an hour.  They cavorted and floated and did all the things little girls should do at a pool.  And then...they began to shiver.  Yes, a unanimous cry of, "It's cold!" erupted in girlish wails as we hurriedly wrapped them in towels and dried them off.  I felt guilty for making them go into the pool on such a cool evening.  We rushed them into the car and closed the doors so that the stuffy heat could warm them up.  Then as we pulled out of the parking lot, I glanced at the thermometer on the building, thinking that the temperature must have dropped drastically.  It was 85F.

My daughters would not be able to survive a summer in Portland.  What would they do on those lovely 76 degree days with a light wind that are considered "perfect" days?  Would they stare in horror, as I remember doing when I was a child fresh from Hawaii, at the pale skinned people walking around in shorts when it was a mere 70 degrees out?  Would they wonder in mute confusion at the crazy people wearing socks, birkenstocks and sweatshirts?  What about the fact that nobody seems to own a decent umbrella?

I realized, this weekend, that my daughters have no point of reference for the crazy, uniqueness that is Oregon. They will grow up and hear stories about how people dress in the Northwest and give nervous chuckles like all the other Texans do.  They won't yearn for spring skiing wearing only a t-shirt and light weight pants.  They won't know what it is like to go camping in the rain.  They won't understand the difference between a drizzle and a shower.  They'll wonder at the weird quirks in their parents: our penchant for "walking EVERYWHERE", our obsession with bikes and helmets, and our absolute refusal to plant blackberries.  

I wonder what their cousins will think as time goes by and the girls develop even more southern tendencies.  Already my girls say, "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir".  They know to stand up straight and look their elders in the eye.  They know how to knock a boy down if he gets too rough.  And they dream of having pink cowboy boots, a ranch with at least 3 cows, chickens and sheep.  They have difficulties learning some words, and I've heard Georgianna actually figure out how to say the word with a drawl first and then correct it to match my speech second.  It really comes out in the way she says, "school."  It sounds like "skewel".  It's the same for the words tool, cool and good.

I guess only time will tell.  Until then, we'll fill it up with good times and good fun.