When I was a little girl, about the same time Moby Dick was a minnow, I remember my dad complaining about the weather.
He blamed unfavourable weather conditions, regardless of what they were, on the government.
As a kid, I didn’t get that reasoning, but, if he said it, it must be so, I told myself.
How was I to know? I was only a kid.
I remember him standing with his back as close as possible to our coal and wood stove, hands folded behind his back, staring morosely out of the kitchen window at the vertical sheets of snowflakes sailing by.
“Damn government,” he would mutter.
Now that I’m adult I must admit I’m a little closer to understanding my dad’s reasoning.
If we blame the government for pretty much everything else, we might as well throw the weather in there as well.
Oddly enough with all the stuff that is going on to blame the government for, real or imagined, it seems the whole population is pretty much focused on the weather.
When is it going to warm up? It’s so cold out there. I’m so sick of this. I hate this country. Why do we live here?
And so on.
It is true.
It is unseasonably cold out there.
Even the stores are confused.
I was lucky enough to have three of my cherished grandsons come for a sleepover the other day and it turns out their very favorite thing to do in the whole wide world is sledding.
They do not care that it is April and sledding is supposed to be a winter sport.
Because they love sledding and I love them, I set out on a mission to find those Krazy Karpet plastic things that stores sell so kids and crazy grandmas such as myself can race down unseasonably snowy white hills in April.
I found them, too, but only after an unusually helpful store employee dug through items that had already been carefully and optimistically stored away.
But, as Robbie Burns penned in his famous poem, the best-laid plans of mice and men do sometimes go awry.
We did not go sledding.
First of all it snowed and then the wind, cruel and heartless that it is, bit into grandma’s face (that would be me) in a most distasteful way while I was out looking for a suitable hill and, suddenly, without warning, I became one of those despicable weather whiners.
“That wind is horrible,” I moaned. “It just goes right through you,” I added, quickly making my way to the fireplace and its fake flames that give the illusion of heat.
We spent the rest of the day, comfortable and warm, doing indoor things like painting and visiting the library and sneaking little peeks on the iPad which was supposed to be strictly forbidden.
In trying to be grateful about the weather, I keep a somewhat running contest with my friend from Saskatchewan.
It’s always colder there. When we are -17C, they are -18C. When the wind is moderately sharp here, it is needle sharp there.
When it is snowing lightly here, they are having blizzard-like conditions.
It’s weird how that happens.
I’m not sure, but I do have an idea what’s probably going on.
And I think it has something to do with their government.
Treena Mielke is the editor of the Rimbey Review.