Harrumph!

Placing two hands full of gym clothes in the basement washer this pre-dawn, I heard the deep hiss of the boiler. That tends to come on when the outside is 35 degrees.

A couple of minutes before, the cheerful radio new voice said highs in Boston today would be in the low 70s — a one-day burst of heat for us in April. In my simple-minded way, I amused myself saying that this New England weather takes some getting used to. We’ve lived here continuously for 29 years.

Perhaps it’s rationalization, but I think the notorious swings and surprises in the air, on the ground and in the water are positive for us locals. Our weather produces a level of awareness that might otherwise require t’ai chi or meditation.

While we can and too often do drone on about the current weather, that’s a human norm. In temperate areas, they have to struggle to note small variances. We literally just look up or feel the air.

I lived in Manhattan for a decade before moving here. There was a span of several years when numerous friends moved to or near Los Angeles for movie or TV jobs. More than once after hearing their laments about unchanging weather, I sent an envelope with autumn leaves of red, orange, yellow and pied mixtures. That didn’t give them temperature swings or snow, but they liked the relics and memories they brought.

Yet, temperate zone residents seem in general not to like airborne surprises. My father-in-law was born, raised and died in South Carolina. It was hot and humid half the year, but their two seasons hot/not as hot were consistent and predictable.

When he and my mother-in-law visited JP, he complained loud and often about the cold, the snow, the frost and the wind. At first, I thought he really hated the chill, but I finally realized that he wanted consistent weather. He had an engineering mind and wanted simple planning for his day, his whole day and his week. This heavy coat in the morning and shirt sleeves by 3 p.m. with raincoat or boots in the evening didn’t suit him.

In contrast, his wife was from Indiana and loved New England in the snow. She radiated enough to warm us all on trips to Vermont for walks in the snow through covered bridges and nights before the rental house fires. She loved the awareness that came with extremes and change.

Many Southern and West Coast locales brag of year-round green and moderate temperatures. As great as that is for landscaping and gardening, it tends toward producing lotus-eaters. My father, who was a Master Gardener as am I, flourished with his plants in Tacoma. Low levels of all-year moisture and little cold helped him grow almost anything and keep an unheated greenhouse in the back for specialty items. Here though, growing plants from seed is a pretty big deal and knowing when to sow in the soil is a gamble with a large piece of intuition.

Consider a long, straight road. Driving it brings instant comfort and familiarity. Yet no turns and unchanging geography can quickly lead to inattention and torpor. Single cars can wreck on such roads, drivers lulled by sameness.

I contend that the sport of weathering the Boston weather has virtues. I am sure it affects and even shapes the locals’ minds. Through regular irregularity, we must develop an appreciation of ambiguity, if not in philosophy at least in dress.

We have to be ready to scrape windshields and shovel front walks in May and sweat walking around the next afternoon or even the same day.

I recall when my oldest son was in nursery school and differentiation was a lesson that shaped his reality. The pre-primary school tots learned same and different at school and on Sesame Street. A regular delighted squeal in the school or playground was, “We have the same!” when they discovered a shared color, number of items, or even similar dessert.

The awareness of and joy in seeing the same, in experiencing the predictable quickly turns into monotony. For a teen or adult, it’s more often the oh-crap moment at the same dinner, TV reruns, repetitious radio playlists, or another day with exactly the same weather as the one before and the one before and the one before.

Like cross-training at the gym, a bit of scrambling to weigh various daily forecasts, guess when you can transplant seedlings safely, or tucking the windbreaker and umbrella in the briefcase are flexibility aids. Geriatric expert have long recommend that we keep up both mental and physical challenges, down to crosswords and playing an instrument, so we keep our minds and emotions in shape as we age.

Too much sameness is at once soothing and deadening. New Englanders do just fine with our constant weather surprises and twists…perhaps because of them.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, weather, New England, Boston, change