Snowflakes that fall on my nose and sunglasses

When I moved to Austin a couple years ago, I swore on my Dirk Nowitzki fathead that I would not change.  I would not become a hippie, an emo, a “cool band” elitist or anyone who throws on a pair of Birkenstocks and exposes her dirty, crusty toenails for all the world to see.  No, the city that keeps it weird WOULD NOT CHANGE a single fake-blonde hair on my head.

Well y’all, I've changed.  No, I haven't cultivated a full head of dreds.  Nor have I replaced all of my Britney Spears tunes with Ghostland ones.  I have changed in an entirely different way.  And I didn’t even know I'd changed until last week, during Dallas’s first “snowfall” of the season.   There I was, driving to work through a flurry of snowflakes and I'll be damned if I didn't SMILE.  Because of the snow.  And then another pig flew past my window.

You see, I am not one of those Texans who is fascinated and delighted with frozen water falling from the sky.  After all,  I was a kindergartener who trudged through a Denver blizzard and a pesky little sister on a sled, pulled by my reluctant brother through white Calgary winters. So up until I was 18, my attitude toward snow was something like an offhanded “meh.”  But then there were the four long years at the music conservatory in one Rochester, NY.  And that is when my attitude changed from “meh” to “Are you there God?  It’s me, the girl from Texas.  JUST KILL ME.”  Ok, it may have had something to do with the fact that Rochester’s skies are especially sunless.  And snow that accumulates into frozen heaps of greasy, gray slush looks way worse under gloomy skies than under the forgiving light of sunshine.  And ok, it probably had a LOT to do with the fact that I started to associate snow with walking through that slush in frumpy down coats and ass-freezing temperatures while my spirit slowly lost all of its breath because I was trying to force it to BE A VIOLINIST AND BE HAPPY ABOUT IT, DAMN IT.

Which is why, for several years, at the very sight of snow, I'd put my hands up in defense and yell, NO I WILL NOT SPEND AN HOUR BY MYSELF IN A TINY PRACTICE ROOM, PERFECTING MY 4-OCTAVE MINOR ARPEGGIOS! And then I'd turn on a sappy love song, curl up with my sunglasses and a pair of strappy sandals and spend the day pining for the sunshine, wondering if I'd feel its heavenly glory ever again.

And how did I get from that to smiles and flying pigs?  Austin, Texas.  The place where five minutes of walking outside in the summertime left me in an ugly, sticky sweat.  The same place where five minutes of walking outside in the dead of winter left me in an ugly, sticky sweat - in the dead of winter, wearing  a short-sleeved T-shirt no less.  The place that is regularly about 10 degrees hotter and 500% more humid than Dallas.  Now I know that 10 degrees sounds like nothing to people who don't live in Texas, Florida, the deep south or any other place that closes down at the drop of a snowflake, but thinks nothing of spending every waking triple-degree summer day frying in the heat. But, trust me, it is different.  So different that even a warm-weather lover like me can start craving cold.  I missed the two times a year I get to drive on ice.  I missed getting to wear my winter sweaters for more than one morning every six weeks.  And I wanted to be able to walk outside in December without wondering if people were staring at the sweaty ring around my neckline or if they were just very fascinated with my remarkably flat chest.

So of course I was happy to see the snow last week.  Because snow, it seems,  no longer means the sun has abandoned me forever, leaving me with only a violin and my Galamian technique book.  No, y'all - it means that I just might get to wear a sweater AND a coat for several days in a row and leave the ugly sweat at the gym where it belongs.

It also means that as I drove through the snow that day, I took a moment to reach out: "Are you there God?  It's me, the girl who kinda likes snow now.  So... can we possibly do something about the flat chest?"