Murderer in the basement

If and when I get skin cancer, I should remember today.

I skied at Pico. It was one of those classic spring days, the kind that feel like winter’s ransom. The sky was blue with a few swaths of cirrus; the sun and a south breeze warmed the air just enough that the snow’s surface softened, but not to the point of turning the snow to gloppy mashed potatoes. And the turns we made in the snow after the hour-plus hike up the mountain reminded me of why I love to ski. When I need a mental trip to my happy place, skiing Pico today could be it.

The only downside to the day — besides the hike up with skins stuck on our skis (which in my book isn’t a downside at all; the exercise is the reason we’re there) — was that I forgot to wear a baseball hat. I had slathered my face with SPF 45, but after five months of keeping my face hidden under hats, scarves, neck gators, and jacket collars, it’s hard to think of the sun as a bad thing.

As we started hiking at 12:30 p.m. — melanoma’s cocktail hour — I realized that we would be staring straight into the sun for the next hour and 15 minutes, never mind the rays reflecting off the bright snow. Well, I reasoned, it’s too nice to head home.

At least if I do get skin cancer — and I very much hope I don’t — I can look back over the past 40-plus years and remember days like today. Or the eight winters spent in Colorado where every weekend was spent skiing at a different resort. Or 12 years racing my bike in the west, sometimes spending up to six hours in the saddle as we rode across the desert, our sweat long ago having washed away whatever sunscreen we remembered to apply at dawn. Or even childhood summers spent in the town pool or swamping metal canoes in the lake at summer camp. Like a really bad hangover, at least it will have been fun that led me to that state.

If only we earned all our illnesses, rather than just contracting them for no good reason. We could rationally weigh the costs and benefits of our actions. Certainly some habits predispose us to illnesses. My weird Aunt Anne smoked eight packs a day and died of lung cancer.

But what about my friend Wendy? She contracted thyroid cancer several years ago, but as far as I know, she eats well and exercises regularly. She’s smart, funny and just goofy enough to be an interesting person. So it’s not like I can say, “Well, duh, if you didn’t so much bacon, then maybe you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

Despite regular tests, her doctors, so far, have been unable to find the source of her cancer. So in a sense, she and her family — her husband and two kids — are living with the equivalent of a murderer in the basement. They know he’s there, but they just can’t find him, nor do they know how he got there. So they go about their daily lives trying not to think about him.

Maybe we all have murderers in our basements. And maybe I let mine in on a nice sunny day when my skis cut through the corn snow like butter.

But I try not to think about it. Why ruin a beautiful sunny spring day? Or even a dreary one for that matter.

And next time, I’ll remember my hat.

Psychotic Boyfriends

Spring is finally showing signs of arriving in Vermont. The crocuses are poking up their brave little heads, and the snow banks are melting, leaving behind their glacial loads of road grit and grime on the lawn. Yesterday, it was almost 60 degrees — the first time it has been that warm since ... since I can't remember when. Last October, maybe?

But no sooner have I washed and put away my winter parka and folded up my scarf, it’s back to blustery and cold, with a north wind beating back any warmth from the sun's rays. And what’s this? Snow in the forecast for Friday?

It makes me feel as if I'm dating a psychotic boyfriend. For no apparent reason, he's suddenly friendly and warm, making me forget completely about the dark days of winter when he was sullen and mean. He even gives flowers on these days. When perfect spring days arrive, I feel like dancing in the street. Throw open the windows! Let’s have a party!

But Psychotic Boyfriend throws these days at us just often enough (which isn’t anywhere near often enough) to allow us to weather the bad days — the days when it snows in May or the rain blows sideways and the furnace can’t possibly take the chill out of the air. These are the days that Psychotic Boyfriend has not taken his medication. It’s a wonder anyone puts up with his behavior.

Just as I'm threatening to walk out — to move south or west or to remote Pacific atolls where the sun always shines — Psychotic Boyfriend softens his blows, turns sunny and warm again, and cons me into sticking around. The earth radiates warmth, the grass turns green, the daffodils finally bloom, the air smells like spring. Now this is more like it. I even feel like inviting the neighbors over for a beer.

For over a decade, I lived out west, where the weather was much more even-tempered — excluding the occasional tornado. I didn’t have to drop everything on a nice day just to get outdoors. There was always the weekend, when the sun would almost always continue to shine. But while living there, I dated an actual psychotic boyfriend, who on a perfectly sunny day would verbally attack me for something — that I didn’t make enough money, that I wasn’t ambitious enough, that I didn’t cook enough. I stuck with him for over three years, living for those really good days when we would climb three 14,000-foot peaks in a day, or mountain bike Moab’s White Rim trail.

I finally dumped the real psychotic boyfriend and realized that I could still climb 14-ners and do long mountain bike rides without the mental anguish. I traded him in for a place where the weather is psychotic and the boyfriend (now husband) is not. Although I would dearly love to live where the sun shines more days than not, we are (I’m slowly realizing) not moving.

If this is the sacrifice I must make — a balanced man for unbalanced weather — then I guess I can’t put the parka away quite yet.

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In 1876, Mark Twain gave a speech entitled “The Weather.” In it, he said, “I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.”