Why is the weather always bad at Christmas?

Thanksgiving was spent with my sister Ellen, who lives in Colorado; Christmas was spent with my brother, Jeremiah, who lives in New Mexico. And here am I in Maine. We have each picked the place that suits us most.

Jeremiah and I had a lovely visit, a lovely Christmas together. He had never been to Maine, and was properly impressed, declaring it beautiful, and cold. I was some-what surprised by that reaction on his part, since I think of New Mexico, at least the mountainous area around Santa Fe, where he lives, as being cold in winter. And I know it snows there. But apparently we're talking degree here. Several days with highs in the mid-20s, nighttime lows around ten, are perhaps a greater degree of cold than he is accustomed to.

And then, of course, he got caught in the Blizzard of 2010, as they were calling it on T.V. This was on Monday, Dec. 27th, the day we were supposed to drive to Portland, visit the Victorian Mansion, decorated for the holidays, which I've only been trying to get myself to since I moved to Maine five years ago, take a general sight-seeing tour of the city, and then settle in for the night at the Holiday Inn by the Bay, where we planned to stay so we wouldn't have to get up at 3:30 in the morning, in order to leave my house by 4:30, in order to get to the airport by 5:30 (Jeremiah's flight was scheduled for 6:50 a.m.)

Except for spending the night at the Holiday Inn, none of that happened. It started snowing Sunday evening, the wind came up during the night, as promised by the weather forecasters, and by Monday morning it was pretty darn ferocious out there, with the winds making the snow blow at the horizontal. I had thought we would try to leave about 1 p.m., but there was just no way I was going to try to drive in the conditions I could see through my living room window at 1 p.m. I told Jeremiah that we might have to wait until later that evening -- the blizzard warning was supposed to end by six p.m. But as the day wore on I got to thinking how I didn't really want to have to cope with driving at night, on top of dealing with snow, wind and poorly cleared roads; for it was quite possible that, even if the blizzard-like conditions had eased by 6 p.m., it would still not be pleasant out there. So at 3 p.m. I made the decision -- o.k., we're going -- and by 3:30 we were on the road.

Jeremiah offered to drive and I let him. He drove very carefully -- indeed, slower than I would have, slower than all the Mainers who were passing us did -- and we arrived safely, a little after 4:30, by which time it was too dark for him to see much of the city as we drove through it to the hotel. It was still very windy, and very cold, though the snow had let up, and we were in solid agreement that we were not going to walk around sight-seeing. After taking our things up to our room, which was nice, if unspectacular, and had the promised view of the bay that we couldn't see because it was night, we went down to dinner in the very nice restaurant, where we were the only customers in the place until just before we left, when another couple came in (the hotel was obviously far from full). The dinner was excellent, to our mutual surprise (a really good restaurant at a Holiday Inn?). My scallops were perfect, and Jeremiah's eggplant with Portobello mushrooms -- which I enjoyed the leftovers from later -- was also very good. It was actually quite pleasant, sitting there by the window looking out at the snowy street under the pink city lights, with the occasional muffled-up person hurrying past.

Later we enjoyed the luxury of lying propped up by all the great pillows on our individual beds, watching an episode of Bones, a show I like because of its emphasis on the importance of science, and because the heroine is the humorless, brilliant, logical scientist, while the hero, an FBI agent, is the romantic, intuitive one.

So after all that was Jeremiah's flight cancelled, like so many others, you're wondering? Since he was flying to Atlanta, not one of the impossible places like New York, New Jersey, or Philadelphia, we were hoping against hope that his flight would not be cancelled. And it wasn't, but it was three hours late leaving. And since Jeremiah got to the airport at about ten of 6 -- courtesy of the complimentary airport shuttle, a really wonderful invention -- he had to hang around the airport for three and a half hours before finally getting on a plane. Then had to wait 2 1/2 hours in Atlanta for the later plane they had put him on, since he had of course missed his earlier connection. He was supposed to arrive in Albuquerque at 1:15, but didn't get in until 6:30 in the evening. An extremely long, tiring day for him, but obviously far better than those folks who had to wait literally days to get back home.

Well, it will all make a good story for him. He can now say he's experienced a New England blizzard.