When honest-to-goodness winter hits

While no blocks of ice sliding off glass walls or falling from the roof happened like they did in New York a few years ago, endangering skulls, these past weeks of heavy snowfalls in the Lower Mainland, a re­gion that includes Vancouver, car crashes and hurt limbs have marked a week of un­preparedness. As Gwen, our strata president, has said, “we often forget we live in Canada just because we rarely get an honest-to-goodness winter.”

These, we hear of only, like say, temperatures dip­ping to minus 22 degrees in the Yukon, where it’s usually at nine here, with the cold­est-ever recorded at minus 17 degrees; shielded by the Vancouver Island’s moun­tains, the region hardly gets an outflow of arctic current. In mountain peaks such as Whistler, though, winter as it should, does happen; yet, denied one during the 2010 Winter Olympics, when it didn’t snow enough for the events such that giant loads had to be hauled from Seattle, as news sleuths alleged.

While we, Vancouverites, stroll through our mild win­ters, we nonetheless claim the cold seeps into the marrow because of its wetness. Elderly Filipinos, like a few of the vet­erans I know, at the slightest whiff of wintry winds, would fly back home, claiming how their bones suddenly stiffen and their backs grow mounds of pain. Fretful over layers of thick clothing, and puffy outerwear, younger Filipinos, on the other hand, wear the gloom of a season that brings the flu, bronchitis, and if resis­tant to neck wraps and tight toques, even pneumonia.

Still, we love to dwell on vicarious scary stories such as in Newfoundland, where a neighbor’s brother almost turned into an ice statue, when caught in a heavy snow­fall, legs half-buried and could hardly lift a foot to get home a few meters away. What about the most hair-raising drive ever, as the son of a friend from Halifax, described how a blizzard met them on their way home from a Christmas Eve dinner; almost zero visi­bility against the driving wind, where snow piled thicker and thicker ahead, “Mom said we could not stop because we would freeze.”

From last month’s and until two weeks ago of snow­falls with minus 6 degrees at its coldest, according to inci­dent reports related to win­ter’s surprise blast, revealed Vancouver’s un-prepared­ness. Consider about 5,000 in insurance-claims calls on the three Mondays it snowed with about 500 car crashes, and slip-and-fall with fractures, sprains and head injuries on yet un-shoveled stairwells and sidewalks.

A “bit mocking,” as a news item noted, but concerned, Northeastern Canadians sent in their advice about getting winter tires, not to drive on someone else’s wheel marks. Find boots with more traction in the soles, and wear woolens including socks, or any fabric that keeps the moisture off your body.

If you must be out for an appointment or chore, after a snow fall, look out for snow­ball fights or mischief that could escalate into “violent mayhem,” as reported in The New York Times years ago when an elderly woman get­ting off a carriage suffered a black eye and deep cuts in the cheek. Also, a man unwarned of a flying snowball “received a severe blow on the side of his head, which rendered him insensible for half an hour.”

If due to have a baby, “just hang out in the hospital lob­by—bring a pillow and a blan­ket—or risk having a baby on your own in a 12 plus-hour commute” like Lisa, a poet, advises. Suffer through a hos­tage by your children, gallop­ing through the couch, rum­maging for food, rather than worry and hyperventilate with news of a school bus stranded on piling snow.

Better yet, give in to the isolation and ventilate impris­oned thoughts, feelings and fears into a journal—these soothe and console because early evenings that fall at 4 p.m. could sink into your heart. Stay with memories that flit in like your grand­mother’s scrambled eggs red­dened by overripe tomatoes.

Yes, comfort food more than any time, tempts fierc­est in the winter. Flavors from fried chicken wings, or adobo for Filipinos, creamy soups like broccoli with cheese or gi­nisang munggo as well as piz­za plates—dishes crossed out in a low-fat low-carbohydrate diet—become irresistible. Vow to resume normal diet as well as a rigid fitness regimen in the spring, because when you shed off your layers, you might discover how much you have ballooned.

Look out for hope of spring among birds. They lace the air with their song—the sweetest from a string quartet of cardinals at dawn, though the highest notes that pierce the grayness are a chickadee’s “feebay!!” If in search of beau­ty, the dark-eyed junco loves the Korean Dogwood—watch and don’t blink, be ready with your smart-phone camera.

If winter forecasts persist, confirm it by looking up the sky—if heavy and gray, and your nose feels wet, again stay home and be safe. Be like the groundhog that had cast a long shadow, foretelling six more weeks of winter, hence, it simply withdrew back to its hole.