Linda Gudas (Sayler)
Kevin,
Remember waking up on snowy school mornings, hoping Don Kent would announce "No school in Needham?" And listening for the fire alarm to blare rhythmically- beginning sometime before dawn- to confirm we could stay in bed? Later, the neighborhood kids and I would bundle up and make a snowman (now, politically correct, a snowperson.) The day after a storm, I recall walking home from Stephen Palmer with my girlfriends, petrified that "the boys" would suddenly appear from behind a tree or snow fort, with snowballs hurling. (In retrospect, that was a bit of prepubertal flirting.) My parents warned me to never look up at a hanging icicle. Oh, and DO NOT eat yellow snow....
Yes, New England winters are compelling. We have lived full time on the Cape for 6 years now. There is something exquisitely beautiful and peaceful about the ocean this time of year - frost-tipped beaches, icy white capped waves, birds huddled together in same-species conventions on the bay.
However, we have succumbed to a few weeks in warm weather come mid-winter. We will never be snowbirds, but a break is nice. Sunny golf courses and heated swimming pools have a strong graitational pull when the wind chill factor here is 10 degrees.
I will think of you from the south in February, as I walk the beach barefoot, looking for seaglass. Wishing you a bunch of no -school snow days....
Linda
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