"In My Opinion . . ."
Jan. 18, 2000
For two days in a row Seattle has been bathed in glorious sunshine. It's crept through every crevice and around every corner. Forget that it's been freezing out: we've seen the light.
Weather prognasticators warned that La Niņa would bring record snows to Seattle this winter. It hasn't so far, but it has brought constant, mind-numbing rain and grey skies to drive me crazy. Day after day I've slogged through dense traffic, going to work and returning home in the pitch black, never seeing scenery on the sides or mountains in the distance. After a while, I begin to forget just why I love living here. The commute stinks, the house looks like a pig sty, and I'm sick of wearing the same five outfits week after week.
And then the sun comes out. The Cascades and the Olympics explode in the east and west with Mount Rainier standing out like a crown jewel. I see the dawn begin as I head toward school, and all during the day the students smile and everyone works happily. This effect is impossible to explain to anyone who lives in the sunbelt. Oh, sure, people in Arizona enjoy sunshine, but they never marvel at its existence. People in Seattle react to the sun much like ancients viewing a total solar eclipse. We truly seem surprised to see the sun again. Its appearance is chronicled all day long, and if like today it is a two-days-in-a-row event, the sun becomes the focal point of every conversation.
I take the sun very personally. It's not the warmth I crave. I am not a summer person. It's the light. I think that's why I spend so much time in our family room during the winter. Our pure white walls are swathed in artificial daylight from an almost obscene number of can lights. They actually heat the room. I don't turn them all on for the heat, however, but for the false sense of sunshine.
I dream of waking up to another sunny day. I can just imagine the weather forecasters tonight, flushed with the joy of reporting something other than rain, rain, and more rain. What a treat it would be to see ANY picture in the four day forecast besides the little drawing of the space needle drowning in a downpour. The odds are against it, but that's one thing about living in Seattle: hope springs eternal.