(Gilmore Girls fan site)There’s one thing missing from Stars Hollow that reminds me every year around this time that it’s not really in New England. And if you could see outside my window right now, you’d know what it is. Or if you live in New England, maybe you can see it. Maybe you noticed it yesterday.
Since yesterday, it’s been the right temperature outside that if my refrigerator stopped working, I could put my milk out on the sidewalk, and it would stay fresh. (The milk, that is, not the sidewalk.) But that’s not the thing that reminds me that Stars Hollow isn’t actually in New England.
Then it began to rain. I was walking out to pick up my girls from the bus. And I began to shiver, and my jacket started to soak through. And like Rory and Paris, I thought of going to Florida for Spring break. But that’s not the thing that reminds me that Stars Hollow isn’t actually in New England.
Then I felt my face being pelted with tiny ice pellets, sleet. And my little girl told me she thought she felt some hail, too. I don’t know if she did. We disagreed over what was actually falling from the sky. But that’s not the thing, either, that reminds me that Stars Hollow isn’t actually in New England.
Mark Twain was right about New England springtime:
In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fame and fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather on exhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. He was going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all the climes. I said, “Don’t you do it; you come to New England on a favorable spring day.” I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and he made his collection in four days. As to variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weather that he had never heard of before. And as to quantity — well, after he had picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he not only had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out; weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to the poor.
The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about “Beautiful Spring.” These are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring. And so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquire how they feel has permanently gone by.
What my Little One and I eventually settled on is what reminds me that Stars Hollow isn’t actually in New England. It covered our coats and hats. It’s still outside this chilly spring day, even though it’s no longer falling from the sky. And it ain’t manna. But it is white and fluffy and laying on the ground. And maybe I’ll go out later and make a snowman… Not!
The next toast was: “The Oldest Inhabitant— The Weather of New England.”
Who can lose it and forget it? Who can have it and regret it? Be interposer ’twixt us Twain. —Merchant of Venice.
-TimK
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