Desi, displaced.

Is it actually possible that I am the only person in Anchorage, Alaska still using their vehicle’s heated seat option to warm their shivering ass in May? 

Okay, it’s possible.  The tell-tale signs of spring are everywhere, after all.   The snow has finally melted.  (On account of which our four year old son, henceforth “the Bug”, recently fell neck-deep into an ocean of dog crap at the park one day – but that’s another story.)  The cheap plastic thermometer on our deck reads 70 degrees after sitting in the beating sun for several hours. Local drugstore shelves have been cleared of anti-histamines.  Hungry suicidal bears are invading homes.  The first mosquito of the year has been spotted staking out our backyard.  Alaskans everywhere are stumbling outdoors, squinting painfully against the light in all their cut-off-Carhartt, grub-white, disbelieving, “let-the-wild-rumpus-begin” start-of-summer glory. 

But you know what?  I’m still chilly, demmit. 

Alaska is no place for a first-generation chick of sub-continental Indian descent.  Though for some reason, it’s an ongoing argument in our house.  According to my husband, I should feel right at home, since I was born and raised in Massachusetts, land of wicked bad winters.  (Cue crotchety old guy wearing red and black checked L.L. Bean hat with earflaps, played by Jack Lemmon)  “Cold and damp?  Yeah, we gotcha cold and damp heah.  Now shut the hell up, you dumbshit, and quit yer bitchin’.  Yer friggin’ feet’ll thaw out in June, ahright?”

That’s all well and good for him, Irishman that he is.  He can swig beer by the barrel to drown his despair.  In my view, the fact that I happened to survive the icy suburbs of Boston cannot hope to quash two hundred billion years of tropical genes.  I’m INDIAN.  We live in ALASKA.  What’s not to understand?

My husband is the kind of guy who removes his shirt at the top of a windy snow-capped mountain JUST FOR FUN, or worse, BECAUSE HE’S HOT.  Thus, he remains untroubled by this Dreadful Thought:  having lived in Alaska for the last 15 years, we have spent 7.5 years of our lives in winter darkness.  YEARS.  Oh, what I could do with those lost hours - no, days, weeks even – spent moisturizing my parched skin, chafing my frozen extremities to restore blood flow, struggling to hold my sleeves while pulling on yet another layer of fleece/polypro/wool/down over my static-wild hair.

And then there’s the Bug, to the frigid manor born, who thinks 40 degrees is sprinkler weather and stomps in slush puddles till his pants freeze to his legs.  If my 81 year old mother-in-law back East could see him, I can’t imagine what she’d say.  

Actually, I can.  “ OhJesusGodlovehim, putaHATonthatkidforGod’ssake!”  

And a jacket, and some mittens.  Kids these days.