Confession:

Today, I am grumpy about the snow.

I know, I know. It’s only my third day here and just yesterday I was waxing poetic about how I loved having to walk in the roads because there was too much snow on the sidewalks. Yes, I was romanticizing, but now it’s already getting old (I can feel all of you St. John’s people out there nodding your heads with an air of supreme knowing and sympathy: poor little Christina from Vancouver).

There are a few factors adding to my grumpiness today:

• my parents have been staying with us and oh-my-gosh-I-couldn’t-do-life-without-them, but when they’re around, my children get a little crazy. I think they can sense my parents and us negotiating boundaries silently amongst ourselves through glances and one word answers and whispering in the kitchen. I think they know this gives them a crack in the normal to try to pry open with their very eager, little fingers. Movies! Games! Sweets! They get crazy-eyed.
• I’m noticing a resistance in myself. Like every time I have to go outside for any reason, my body resists. My muscles tighten. I don’t want to drive anywhere in the slush. I don’t want to jump over that pile of snow just to get to the car. I don’t want the back of my pant legs to be wet from the slush my son is innocently kicking around because, “it feels like dough.” There’s a bracing. My body is guarding itself against harsher elements than it’s used to.
• Things feel harder. Today I took my four-year old daughter to a friend’s house and as we were leaving she decided to stomp through the soft snow on the way to the car. It got in her boots. Her boots came off. She was cold. When we got back to our place she refused to put her boots back on so I carried her boots and other items in one hand and hoisted her up on my hip with the other. For some reason she decided to climb me like a ladder instead of embrace me like a baby chimp and then, the keys fell into the dirty slush as she was pulling on my hair. Not my favourite moment (and I get that I sound so complain-y. Bear with me?).
• Oh, and I almost forgot. I had the worst fall I had in years here today as I was walking down the front steps of my son’s school, chatting to a dad I had just met. It wasn’t a trip. It was a flat-on-my-face-on-the-sidewalk fall. It had nothing to do with snow or ice or St. John’s. But today, I blame it on the snow and the ice and St. John’s anyway.
• Boots. I’m just realizing that yes, I have to wear snow boots every. single. day. I tried to wear my beautiful leather boots out today because I’m not going very far. I came home with wet, cold feet worrying about my precious Trippens and the hardship I had put them through. Poor boots. Silly me. (again, St. John’s people, I can feel you nodding: “I know, I know, silly Christina.“).
• And coats. Big, hard to do up, fluffy, marshmallow coats.
• The small-town feel of this place. Someone said today that all you need to do to have a social life in St. John’s is to go outside your door. I like that. I really do. I’ve been away for almost ten years and I can just show up here, walk out my door, and most definitely bump into someone I know or recognize about ten to fifteen people as I walk through downtown. And I didn’t even grow up here. I only lived here for two years back in the early 2000’s. I like that a lot. But again, I’m bracing myself. Bracing myself for that meeting with a person I might not want to bump into with my hair disheveled, carrying a four-year-old on my hip while dropping keys in the grey slush. There are just some people I want to see coming before they see me. And you can’t be guaranteed of that here.

So, hopefully this is simply a passing whininess that will subside as we adjust to life here and I shake myself clean of the fog. I mean, we’ve only been here three days. Three days.

Breathe.

And to counter my whininess, let’s try a positive list to see if that helps shall we?

• My parents are here. I can sleep, take time for myself, and enjoy these first few days of settling in.
• I’ve heard that a harsher living environment can create a more interesting, patient, sociable, resilient character in people. Right? That’s a thing. Right?
• My daughter trusted me enough to lift her through piles of snow and held onto me with all her might. I am that person for her. And that’s just the sweetest and most humbling thing.
• My fall was funny. It should have been caught on video. And a guy helped me up to my feet and was very gracious about the whole thing. I’m thankful for that.
• I kind of like the simplicity of only ever having to pick out that one pair of winter boots to wear. Easy-peasy.
• My mother gave me one of her beautiful winter coats to wear because I don’t have a waterproof one. She’s the most generous person I know.
• I love how I can walk out my door and have a social life. Just today, this one day, I met one of my favourite St. John’s musicians at the coffee shop. His daughter is in my son’s Grade 1 class. I met an acquaintance I had in 1994 who went to King’s College in Halifax with me. Her daughter is also in my son’s class. Seriously. That’s all kind of amazing.

OK, that did help a little actually.

Note that the first list is longer. But bigger is not always better.