Although my mother moved my sister and I to one of the hottest states in the deep south, my father stayed up north near his siblings and parents.
- The winters seem to be getting colder every year, with some lows getting as bad as negative thirty degrees fahrenheit.
I can’t even imagine living in temperatures that cold for weeks or months at a time, especially considering they had snowfall in late April this year. When I lived there as a kid, I remember thinking it was unusual if the temperatures were still cold on my birthday during the last week of March. I guess the climate is changing and has changed a lot in the years since my mother moved us away. Down south the winter weather rarely gets colder than 30 degrees, and that’s during the absolute worst cold snaps and it’s only that cold for a few hours from 3am to 6am. This year my dad had to suffer through four weeks of winter in Illinois without a working heating system in his truck because of his financial situation. I tried to help him out with the expenses to make the repairs, but he refused. After four weeks of an Illinois winter, he finally had enough money put aside from work to afford the repairs. He was so relieved after turning the key and feeling the warm air immediately leaving the vents inside. The closest corollary I have is losing a/c in my car in the summer, but I’ve dealt with that in the past by simply driving around with open windows everywhere I went.