Snow, snow, snow!

There are a lot of things that I'd be surprised to see out my kitchen window. A grizzly bear, for instance. A streaker in a trench coat (I can only hope for that one). Medusa. Feet that aren't attached to a person. You get the idea. But nothing had me more surprised than seeing honest-to-goodness snow falling from the sky the day after New Years. Snow here is a once-every-couple-of-decades thing. So, despite it only amounting to a couple of inches and disappearing the following day...for a few hours we, too, got to experience a tiny little sliver of Real Lady Winter in all her glory. And no one was more excited than I was.

I was born in the San Fernando Valley. So were my parents. While my four (still living, by the way) grandparents were not born in Southern California, all came here as either children or young adults. One grandpa arrived here via Model T with his mother and settled in what's now the heart of East L.A. Another rubbed elbows with gangsters and movie stars alike as a cop on the beat in 1950s Hollywood. One grandma graduated from Los Angeles High School in the '40s, and another watched movies for a nickel by the ocean in Long Beach--before movies had sound and before people had cars. Our family's roots in Southern California run deep, and, due to the nature of our home state's geography, snow has not factored into our day-to-day life for the last century.

But, contrary to popular opinion, it sure does snow in California. And it snows a lot. But of course, it only snows in certain parts of this great, Golden State, and generally only at the higher elevations. As a kid, my grandparents had an awesome cabin in Big Bear where we would go to get our winter weather fix, and now my parents own a similar mountain getaway in Tehachapi. Even when there were no cabins in the family, I can remember my parents driving us up to Frasier Park for a day of sledding down whatever hill was most convenient and, often, had the most dangerous natural protuberances (my mom must have loved that). I'm grateful that my dear parents always provided us the chance to enjoy the white stuff. But alas, it's just not the same as having it in your own backyard.

So, I want to take this opportunity to thank Mother Nature for her New Year's gift. I've always dreamed of seeing snow from my kitchen window. Even more than that streaker, dare I say. And while I'm sure if I lived on the East Coast or in Alaska or Russia, I would spend most of the winter huddled in a cozy burrow in my closet, wearing four pairs of pants at all times, and ordering pizza every other day so I wouldn't have to leave the warmth of my heated home...I enjoyed being a part of your world for one day. And when that backyard thermometer hits 110 this August, I'll remember what it felt like to have snow crunch beneath my feet one crazy January afternoon.