Weather Houses

Things lost and forgotten turn up suddenly when the time is right with their inscrutable or scrutable messages. The weather house I must have bought years ago at a yard sale then put in a closet and forgotten turned up yesterday on the edge of a waste paper basket, teetering there as though to get my attention.

It was in bad shape, battered, the back held on with a strip of tape, and the two significant figures, a woman and a pair of children, had fallen off their fragile azle. When it worked, if it ever did work, this azle, inside the house, was connected to the tiny thermometer so when the temperature fell, perhaps signifying bad weather (although this would have been at best a guess), the woman came out of the house; when the temperature rose, at last meaning sun, the pair of children swung out.

I remember when I was a small child the weather house mystified and fascinated me. How did it work, really? How was the change in temperature connected to this fragile azle, made out of a tiny splinter of wood? Later, I was irritated by it; who or what gave the thing the power of prophesy? Probably I tried to take it apart, to reveal its secret, which may be why it’s so battered now it is going to the trash.

I remember childhood, if at all, in flashes and bits; I have no consecutive memories until I was in my double digits. But I remember what I felt, in many ways similar to the way I feel today, and to the opinions that have sprouted, mushroom-like, upon those feelings:

I don’t like prophesies. I especially don’t like prophets although I expect I would accept the female version.

Now as I approach my 88th birthday next month, I’m amazed at the long life of these feelings and opinions. Of course they have been modified over these many years, but only partially. I still listen with incredulity to prophets, even the homely prophets of the news, who don’t even claim to have the gift of second vision but speak with great authority.

And I still try with all my might—although now I can laugh at my efforts—to force the good-weather children out of their ramshackle house, no matter what the tiny thermometer says.

Now as we slowly admit that we are in the midst of climate change, no longer reassured that it is something future generations will have to struggle with, I know I’ll be recalcitrant, still accepting as my right warm weather in spring, cold weather in winter, and taking as a personal affront the miserable cold and chill here in the Ohio Valley.

Becoming slightly more reasonable, I credit myself with getting out of this place in 1991 because the horrible climate was “killing me.” Well, maybe not literally, but it was forcing the two children to spend a lot of their time in their dark little weather house.

I’ve made some progress, though cold weather clothes are amazing, long underwear is a life safer, and when I learned to ski, I also learned to love the cold, crisp mountain weather that make winters in New Mexico a perilous delight.

But I’ll never be reconciled to the weather in the Ohio Valley and if climate disruption ruins my winter, I’ll still be trying, in my mind, to force the two children out of the weather house.

In Kentucky