The first winter

So far it's been gray and wet and mild, the lake steaming on the cold mornings, and everyone I meet says the same thing about the winter, which is that it's coming. They say it the way people here say everything about winter, as a kindness and a warning at once.

This is my first winter living here since I left for college, and I'm more nervous than I let my mother see. In Seattle, winter was a long rain. You put on a better jacket and complained about the light. Here it's something you prepare for, like a test. I have bought boots that the man at the store called "real boots," with the emphasis of someone who had looked at the ones I came in wearing. I have a scraper in the car, and a blanket, and a candle in a coffee can, because my mother says so and has for thirty years.

The office has its own weather. The building's heat came on in October, and the two radiators in our room have entirely different personalities. The one by the windows knocks, like someone who wants to be let in, mostly around nine in the morning and again at four. The one by the door hisses, and does very little else. Owen has bled them both, read a long forum thread about steam heat from 2009, and given them names, which I'm not allowed to tell you.

The print shop downstairs closes at six. After that the building gets quieter and colder at about the same rate, and if I'm working late, I can tell the time by my hands.

If you've lived through real winters, what do you wish someone had told you before your first one?