Snow Days

I'm trying to hire a nanny for September, when we move to Istanbul. Today one asked whether she'd get snow days off. Snow days? Snow days!

Here on the Mediterranean our weather is pretty much the same all year round. It took me a while to get used to not checking the weather forecast first thing each morning -- will I need an umbrella? A sweater? An early start on my way to work? But I'm not complaining; who would, if they woke up each day to a cloudless turquoise sky and knew that every day was t-shirt weather?

With time I've learned to see the subtle differences between this region's four seasons, and I appreciate them. Spring and fall are long, not rushed like they are in Toronto; and although most bahar days are as hot as a summer day back home, they still have that distinctive smell that neither summer or fall have. Sure, July and August here are unbearably hot, but there are ways around that -- air conditioning and the beach!

But I miss snow. There is no snow brush in my trunk; no skates in my closet. And I miss the feeling a snowfall excites. The other day, we took a walk after a rainfall and I started to warn my husband of a slick black spot up ahead on the pavement. (The sleep-deprived brain is a tricky fellow!) But I stopped myself mid-sentence -- it was twenty degrees out; the nearest black ice was six months and 2000 kilometres away. But the incident made me realize the extent to which winter is in my bones.

Which is why one of the reasons I'm excited about our upcoming move to Istanbul is its climate. There will be snow in winter! (And snow days!)

You Can Take the Girl out of her Climate, but You Can't Take the Climate out of the Girl

I woke up this morning to a less-than-perfectly-sunny day, and my heart skipped a beat -- might it actually rain? The sky was gray and there was a heaviness in the air. But I didn't dare hope in case I jinxed it, and told myself the sky would be blue in no time. That's after all what happened yesterday, and what usually happens in this part of Turkey.

But by 9am I heard thunder, and soon afterwards rain. I turned off the air conditioning and opened all the windows and balcony doors, and basked in the day's weather. The silence (everyone was staying indoors); the sound of an occasional car on the wet road -- different from the sound cars usually make; the fresh smell of the wet air.

This is the first time I've seen rain in Turkey since I've been pregnant, so at least six months. I realize how much I miss the climate of Northern Europe and Canada.