La Suegra Effect

They called it “Gigantic January.” For 30 days and 30 nights, the heavens opened, and the gray skies dumped copious amounts of dreamy white powder upon the land. Meanwhile, cars were all-but abandoned under thick white blankets, jobs were jettisoned, loved ones neglected, relationships scrapped, dishes left to stack in the sink – all in the name of amassing as many turns as humanly possible on scant hours of sleep, happy hour nachos and lactic acid-laden quads.

And just when you thought you’d never see another one like it, along comes the most epic winter in many memories, masquerading as another ho-hum La Niña dud. And while I’m sure there are some meteorological phenomena at work behind the scenes, I’m going to place most of the responsibility for this year’s dumpage on something I like to call “La Suegra Effect.”

That’s right. It all has to do with my mother in law. Call me crazy, but over the past decade, she has called Durango home off and on for a few winters. And, I kid you not, every time she sets down roots, she is followed from her temperate, coastal home by a runaway pineapple express from frozen-over hell. While some may say it is a jinx that afflicts transplants from her particular place of origin (which shall remain nameless except to say it rhymes with Bailifornia), I disagree. I think we can pin the amassing snowbanks and skyrocketing snow totals to one small, seemingly harmless action. See, every morning, no matter what sort of precipitorial adversity lies out her front door, she walks out to pick up her morning New York Times barefoot.

Apparently, the habit is a holdover from years spent in more moderate latitudes where the worst that can happen during such a venture is slipping on an avocado peel. (OK, so there are earthquakes, but not even a good pair of shoes is gonna save you then.) Nevertheless, it’s a habit that’s not about to die just because of some silly old thing like hypothermia or frostbite. All I know is, far be from me to argue. I mean, if she wants to thumb her bare piggies daily at the weather gods, tempting their mercilessly snowy wrath, then so be it. Being an avid fan of big snowpacks myself, I may condone the act. OK, some would say going so far as offer buying her a pair of “Yak Tracks” for those especially perilous morning missions may constitute egging her on.

I guess that’s because even though my roof has sprung a leak bigger than Niagara and the snowbank outside my house routinely swallows my 2-year-old necessitating powder cords at all times, I find a certain undeniable charm to a good, old-fashioned wallop of a winter. For starters, how often are cross country skis the transportation mode of choice in our drought-plagued corner of the West? Even though my bases now resemble the craters of the moon, I’ll say it’s a lot easier than trying to dig my car out of its icy cocoon. And when’s the last time you grabbed fresh down the college front hill, before work? In fact, I have become so besotted with the novelty of it all, that I even took it upon myself to build an ice rink in the back yard. To be fair, I guess I should disclose that I served as more of the “general” on this project, delegating the heavy lifting to my foreman.

By now, some of you are probably wondering what sort of heavy lifting could possibly be involved in a back yard ice rink other than a garden hose. Well, all I can say is, the Internet is a very scary place. Especially for husbands of wives fond of half-baked, do-it-yourself, hair-brained schemes. Suffice to say, by the time I was through with the “research,” we had enough raw materials to build a backyard replica of Atlantis. Unfortunately, nowhere in my extensive Googling did it mention trees. Needless to say, we thought the sturdy ash, which grew squarely in the middle of our blueprint, would be a good addition to the rink, imparting a rustic feel while providing a central focal point. Unfortunately, all it did was act as a sieve, funneling all the water into a small adjacent reservoir that no amount of duct tape could stop up. Back to the drawing board, we cropped the tree out of the plan, sacrificing square footage in the name of avoiding a small tsunami come springtime and salvaging neighbor relations. Unfortunately, things soon went from bad to worse as we were saddled with more setbacks including frozen pipes, a broken faucet, and a dog with a proclivity for chewing gaping holes in the plastic liner. But worst of all, temperatures were starting to flirt with the above-freezing mark, and the sun’s angle was rising, ever so slightly. We knew we had to work fast, and after several late-night, sub-zero missions, we finally had a respectable, if not slightly downsized, version of our sheet of dreams. One more hot water touch-up with my homemade PVC-boni (patent pending), and we’d be ready for action: quaint evening skate parties under glittering Christmas lights, friendly games of pick-up hockey, graceful double luxes, mugs of warm cocoa with marshmallows were all within my grasp.

And then it snowed. And snowed. And snowed some more.

And somewhere buried deep under that heavy, heat-trapping, space blanket of white is my ice, its perfectly smooth sheen slowly dissolving into a pock-riddled heap of slush. So, however thankful I may be for the second coming of Gigantic January, I can’t help but have my hopes pinned on a Fabulously Frozen February.

Just one skate, that’s all I ask. And who knows, maybe I’ll even walk out there barefoot, just to be sure.

– Missy Votel