Wanted Winter

When I was a kid in San Diego and “California Dreamin’ ” by the Mamas & the Papas was a hit, I didn’t know the song was about someone back East singing wistfully about our weather. I thought they were bemoaning our cold weather--those nippy, gray days when it would dip down into the 50s.

Back then, I had a romantic yearning for real weather. I was ignorant of El Nino or else I would have prayed for it. Instead, I would imagine myself crossing the Scottish moors, wearing a hooded wool cape the color of heather. Well, actually, it was a plaid acrylic fringed poncho, and I was crossing the hot playground blacktop, but I knew there was real weather somewhere out there. Somewhere far east of where I lived, people with noses and cheeks tinged a delicate pink by the chill were swaddled in exquisite tweed greatcoats, downy cashmere mufflers, gloves and knee-high leather boots, moving gracefully through the snow. They weren’t like me, perpetually tan under a remorseless blue sky, forced to go outside and play with my new toys on Christmas in a sleeveless holiday shift. December wasn’t any different from July, and it made me furious. How could you possibly be a moody, brooding artist when every day was so relentlessly cheery? I asked my parents if they missed the cold of Detroit and Little Rock? The reply: Are you crazy, young lady?

Finally, I got my wish. When I was 24, I moved to Manhattan. On my last visit there--it was November--shortly before moving, I had gotten an inkling of what weather was really about. I was walking down 5th Avenue. In front of Tiffany’s, I felt a cold gust whistle right through my thin wool “winter” coat, and I felt something I had never felt before in my life. My ass was cold.

Of course, I could never take a hint. Right after I relocated in January 1982, New York experienced a record-breaking cold wave. But I was all for it. Those arctic blasts off the East River? More, please! I survived that first winter just fine. It was still a novelty. It was during the following winter’s Great Blizzard that weather began to wear on me. Dealing with frozen ears and numb fingers, constantly trying to keep track of gloves, scarves and umbrellas, shoes ruined by salt stains, entirely separate sets of clothes for indoors and out--well, it got old fast. Pathetic, wimpy Californian that I am, I couldn’t see what the point of it all was. And it was depressing--far more than all that sunshine had been.

Still, it wasn’t the weather that sent me packing back to California eight years later. It was the pursuit of comedy writing. And what could be more comic than Angelenos in December taking part in the hilarious pretend-winter charade? Oh, we crazy Californians! How we whip out our Prada parkas, Missoni sweaters, Ralph Lauren anoraks, mufflers and wool caps (with ear flaps!) to protect ourselves against those bitter 50-degree mornings. Brr! But wait, it gets better. Lunchtime comes, it’s up to 80 and we swelter in our turtlenecks at a sunny window table as we suck down iced tea and wait for our visiting New York pals, who roll up to the curb in their rented convertibles, gleeful in shorts, Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, blithely unaware of their seasonal fashion fantasy faux pas.

Best of all, though, is the nighttime. Thanks to some mystery of California architecture, the only place the daytime temperature ever dips below 50 degrees in Los Angeles is inside our homes. In the winter, houses here suck up any outside cold air in the wee small hours and preserve it for our return in the evening. So as we shiver in our Donna Karan gabardine and Calvin Klein cashmere next to our pathetic gravity furnace or our sad, sad little wall heater, we can weep hot tears of frustration because there is no one to see how good we look.