I Wish I Had a River

Cold. Snowy. Again. I played Joni Mitchell over and over in the car on the slow drive down south. “It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees. They’re putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. I wish I had a river, I could skate away on.” Even though she sings of wanting a frozen watered winter, and I could cry at the thought of more snow, the song's melody drifted in melancholy cadence with the tiny white flakes that stuck to the parts of my windshield where the wipers couldn’t reach.

The first friend I made in college introduced me to Joni Mitchell. I was a high-hair reject from the 80’s New Wave movement, and Kelly, the girl I met running at 6:00 in the morning on my second day in Boulder, was an enigma in an oversized Boston College sweatshirt. She drank way too much. She was dating a 43 year old who looked disturbingly like Jesus. She knew what tofu was and ate it religiously. We listened to “Yellow Taxi” until her roommate threatened to jump out the window. She was later arrested for trying to break into the train on display in the park on Broadway. Actually, she was arrested because she got belligerent with the cop. She told us later on that Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”cycled through her head throughout the whole ordeal. Whenever he sings about playing with the pencils on the group “W” bench, I think of Kelly.

This time of the year under any circumstance always brings me to my knees. I joke that my toes go numb some time in early January and don’t thaw out until late May. The comfort of a warm, wool sweater has long since lost its appeal. And my diet goes to hell because I can’t stand the thought of putting anything cold inside my body (there goes dairy, fruit, raw veggies, and any water other than a cup of tea or bitter coffee).

I suppose you could approach this drawn-out wait for spring two ways. Proactively, you could crank up the heat in your house, paint your toenails and shave your legs, put ABBA on the stereo and dance away your winter blues to really bad disco music. I tend to go the other route. I sniff the crotch of the sweatpants piled up in the dirty clothes hamper, pull my robe tightly around me, huddle under my down comforter with a box of tissues, and curl up with Joni Mitchell on repeat, wishing she could skate away over and over again from the cd player across the room.