After a week of below freezing temperatures and a sleet/ice/snow storm that closed roads and highways, cancelled schools and government offices, and disrupted meetings and appointments all over South Texas, I am only now thawing out while writing this. We didn’t get as much snow in San Antonio as they did farther East (6” in Houston), but this was the first measurable snowfall we’ve had here since the disastrous winter storm four years ago in 2021. 

     No doubt you remember that weather event no matter where you live; it was the one that resulted in a total power-grid failure and left us without heat and electricity in our homes for days, and without our Senator “Cancun Cruz” who fled to Mexico.That storm left us with more than 6” in the City; before that, the last measurable snowfall we had was in 2017. The fact is that  we do seem to be getting more severe winter weather recently, including snow. I only remember it snowing once in my life in all the years growing up in South Texas and that was a mere dusting hardly worthy of all the excitement. 

     Ah, the weather: “Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get,” Mark Twain famously said. Of course, these days, the controversy between the climate and the weather is a hot topic. I sit here in my sweater watching the news every night about the horrendous fires in Southern California. Add to that, coverage of record snows and ice in the South and into the Northeast. Climate or weather, wherein lies the cause, and “who-in” lies the blame?

   Here in South Texas, our greatest weather events have always been hurricanes. As I look back, I realize that I have been in the biggest of them: Carla, Harvey, Celia, Ike. But having lived in different parts of the Country and traveled elsewhere around the world,  I have also been directly involved in other major weather events: earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, blizzards, volcanic eruptions, hoarfrost (frozen fog), gale-force winds at sea, and crippling drought here at home. Yet, other than having to evacuate our apartment building in New York for a night-time fire, I have never, thank god, had to endure the paralyzing fear or devastating loss experienced by the rapidly advancing flames on those living in the path of a full-on forest fire such as those in California.

     Allow me to deviate for a backstory here: A number of years ago, we sold our longtime home in Stamford, CT, in order to make a pre-retirement move farther up County. Now I loved that home in Stamford; we had lived there for 23 years, raised our son there, built our careers there, and established our place in the community. The house was a long, low, mid-century modern style (a Better Homes & Gardens design winner in the 1970s) situated on a hill that sloped down to a private lake. Being a newly-built modern house in an established neighborhood of traditional New England colonials, it took forever to sell. But we persevered because it was time for us to go, to downsize and move on. The people who finally bought it brought in architects and contractors to draw plans and they promised to upgrade and expand the house. That made us very happy.

     Watching the California fires unfold over the last several days, with the initial blazes, then the hopes of containment, then the rash of new eruptions, then the tragic loss and grief of whole communities that have ended up with nothing left of their lives has made me grateful for having survived my own past weather events relatively unscathed. As I witnessed bereaved  homeowners gradually return to their Pacific Palisades neighborhoods to sift through the debris and detritus for some remnants, however small, of their former lives, I have been reminded of “the loss” of that Stamford home.

     Once we had moved, we were still living near Stamford. I still worked there, we had friends there, doctors and services there — in many ways, it was still “home” to us. My husband never wanted to even drive by our old house when he was down there, but I was curious about all the renovations and wanted to see how they were coming along. So one day a few weeks after we had moved, I drove on over by myself, turned down the street by the lake, and maneuvered, as best I could, toward the steep hill of the driveway through all the trucks and construction vehicles. Finally, I just parked the car, got out and walked to the top of the incline. And there, to my complete shock, I found nothing left but an exposed basement. I stood there stunned and immobilized, and then I started to cry. 

     A man in a hard hat came up alongside me and asked, nicely, who I was and what I was doing there. I explained that I was the former owner of the house no longer in front of us and that I wanted to stop by and see how the new owners’ promised renovations were coming along. All I  wanted to know now was what happened to that promise. “It became clear that all the plans for re-design were too costly,” he said, “and so it just made sense to raze the house and start over.”

     Back home later I called my son, who is an architect, to tell him the news and express how angry and upset I was. “They broke their promise,” I moaned, “and now our beautiful home is gone.” He listened to me sniffle and snort for a while, and then, very simply said, “Mom, it was just a house and the house is not the home. You have your memories and they go with you.”

     Of course, we had left that house in Stamford with a great deal more than just the clothes on our backs, so my experience of that loss is hardly equivalent to the losses Californians are suffering. But I have often recalled my son’s realistic observation on that particular day when I have faced other instances of loss in my life. His comment speaks to a universal truth: You don’t need things, any things really, to tell you who you are and who you love as long as you have your life and your memories. It’s a hard truth, but one worth remembering.

     So much for the past and memories hot and cold. Meanwhile, here we are in the present in 2025, where hell has begun to freeze over.