A truly raging thunderstorm dropped hail on this tiny city last night. Temperatures, prone to range between low 90s and crisp 60s this time of year, instead plummeted into the 30s. Not even two weeks ago it was still open season for pool parties, yet last night as twilight turned an eerie ozone gold and pink clouds fought with black across a sweeping sky, ice was falling!
Ice was falling, covering the street and piling deep over the summer-green grass. I had to get outside for a better look. Grabbing a videocorder and a heavy, hooded, coat, out I went. I was unprepared for the effect, in person. I could see my breath! It smelled like snow, here in this city where snow never falls! And that innocuous fir tree that shades the front porch, it was behaving somehow differently in this chilly air, because all of a sudden I wasn't just scenting snow upon the wind, I was smelling Christmas!
Just like mid-Decembers from my childhood, crunching across the frozen landscape of a Tree Farm (or, in later years, some disused parking lot, hosting a seasonal Christmas tree sale), the smell of pine was heavy and lush. It's one thing to read about how our memory circuits are tied to olfactory cues more than any other- it's something else entirely to get blasted in the face by a rush of raw, snowy childhood in the midst of a freak patch of raging winter. I had just stepped outside, and was sheltering in the safety of the porch, when I was ambushed by the Christmas.
And there it was, not just the Tree Farm scene, but a full vision of the Catholic nativity assembled together, three-foot tall painted statues in a wood and straw lean-to. There was the baby Jesus, in the wood and straw crib, there was the holy family and some scruffy shepherds, too, and there were those ceramic angels affixed to the roof of the lean-to shed thing, gazing down placidly. Around it all, building a sweet dark backdrop, were five or six unadorned pine trees. And this was all indoors, in a nave of the huge church I grew up in, off to the side of the main altar zone.
It was the best time of year to be trapped in that church, when it smelled so sweetly of pine and fir. I could study those nativity figures and let my mind wander back to the wonderland of 1 AD, when shepherds wore pastel robes and congregated in open-air shacks to admire newborns. I could search about the entire church, looking for those Wise Men statues, and try to estimate how far they were moved each day, so that they would join the lean-to crowd on precisely January 6th. In short, I could escape the ritual and drudgery of the mass.
It was a nice change of pace from the terrible stained glass tableaus of war and anguish in the clouds, with their illegible banners and pithy Latin. And it was Christmastime, so there were thoughts of onrushing gifts and presents to further sweeten the mood.
Last night's freak storm reminded me, magically, of some of the more charming Catholic moments of my childhood. I hope I'll always have access to those memories, even if I need to go in search of fir trees and freezing weather to conjure them.
