They used to say there were three seasons in Michigan: construction, winter, and taxes. You can guess which one was my favorite – it had to be everyone's favorite. Winter meant something in Michigan. It wasn't just a time of year – it was a way of life.
    I don't remember a time when the cupboards weren't stocked with chicken noodle soup and hot chocolate. You know that box you put up in the corner of your closet full of sweaters, scarves, and gloves? We filled that box with our tank tops and flip flops. Most times of the year you'd find piles of wet socks hanging over the heater next to my neon pink snow pants. We gave "It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas" a whole new meaning.
    My sister and I made it a point to stay outside until either we couldn't feel our extremities or our parents made us come inside anyway. When we went outside, we were twice the size of our normal selves in all the layers. On really cold days, we'd wear ski masks. I'd be minding my own business, rolling up a snowman's torso, and my sister would peg me in the back with a snowball. When I'd turn to her, I could see the knitting of the ski mask tighten and I'd know she was grinning at me.
    Even my dog, a carefree golden lab with the most fun of spirits, liked to join in the festivities. We lived at a dead end street, so the snow plow would come through and push all the snow from the road up onto the dead end with a grinding crunch and leave us a huge bank to build a fort. We'd bring my dog outside and take him over to the bank, point at a spot in the snow and say, "Get it! Find it, Ranger!" and he'd dig like that was his purpose in life, bits of snow and ice flying everywhere in a spray behind him.
    Needless to say, it didn't take us long to build snow forts.

    When I found out my family was moving to Alabama, the last thing on my mind was the weather change. I was busy worrying about leaving home, leaving friends, leaving life as I'd known it for ten years.
    I remember my first winter in Alabama. I had unpacked my winter clothes as normal. We put up the tree and the lights. We got the nativity scene out and set it on the coffee table. We had presents and stockings and everything red and green. But we kept the curtains closed. I didn't want to look out my window and see the apartment complex pool full of water or the neighbors walking around in shorts.
    The first snow I experienced in Alabama, if you can call it that, was a light dusting, a layer that had melted by noon. The best I could do was to scrape a bit of snow off the top of the car and build a six-inch snowman. He was gone by nightfall.
    Apparently, though, the locals take such a dusting much more seriously than I do. A forecast for an inch of snow can cause an uproar here, a wild dash to the nearest supermarket. You never can have too much bottled water or bread, and you might as well make sure you have enough canned food to last you the winter just in case that one inch of snow traps you in your house for a few months or more.

    I have definitely had more snow days in Alabama than I ever did in Michigan. I guess when the salt trucks are at the ready and the plows are out in the middle of the night, no amount of snow can stop a Michigander from getting to school. We knew we'd have to go, but we'd get up earlier than necessary just to watch the news and wait expectantly for the school closings. We were usually disappointed.
    You know those stories you hear, about how your grandpa used to walk to school for miles in six feet of snow, barefoot, uphill, both ways? I can't say I ever had it that bad, at least not the barefoot and uphill parts. But I have walked a couple miles to school in the snow and it was uphill, one way at least.
    It's always colder in the morning. Imagine taking up the better part of an hour walking to school in the early morning cold. Taking in that 6 a.m. Michigan air is like breathing in a solid icicle, and as soon as it hits your throat it bursts into a million shards of pleasant little pinpricks. If the salt hasn't melted the snow on the sidewalk, the only sounds you can hear are the cars zipping by and the repetitive crunch of your boots – you can almost hear the microscopic bits of ice being pressed and latching onto one another – like a thousand little mouths biting into a thousand little ice cubes.
    But the entire splendor that is experiencing a Michigan winter's day is lost when sleet is involved. If you stand in front of a fan blowing at twenty miles an hour and someone throws a bucket of thumbtacks into the current of air and into your face, you might have an inkling of how the sleet feels, at least how it felt on that particular day.
    When I finally got to school, I got my regular shoes out of my backpack and changed out of my dripping boots and went to my math class. Now, the day was bad enough – my clothes were soaking wet, I had little red scratches all over my face, and I was forming a puddle underneath my seat – but I had math first period. My teacher was only trying to be nice; she asked if anyone in the class had a hair dryer for me to dry myself off. I was humiliated enough without her help.
    No one had a hair dryer anyway.

    Alabama's monthly temperature ranges from a high of 91.5 degrees Fahrenheit to a low of 30. To an Alabamian, the average low of 14 degrees in Michigan is astounding, and the thought of it frequently being colder than that is mind-boggling.
    Somehow over time I've lost my tolerance to moderate coolness – around 50 degrees I start getting chilled. But as the temperature continues to drop and everyone else is getting colder and colder, I stay about the same.
    It can be so cold in Michigan, you can't even feel it.
    My sister and I went to the same high school, so once she got her car, she used to drive us to school. The senior parking lot was about a quarter of a mile's worth walk away, and there was no getting closer, no matter how cold it was.
    As soon as my sister pulled the keys out of the ignition and the heater hummed to a stop, the cold started to seep in. We dreaded opening the doors.
    The cold would explode into our faces as if propelled by some great force. It was awful. But as we climbed the hill up to the school, gradually the cold would fade and a sort of numbness would set in, starting with our noses.
    By the time we got to the main entrance, we'd forgotten it was winter at all – it was just a school day. We remembered, though, when we walked inside. Just as the cold had hit us earlier, a blast of heat would strike our faces and seep down our bodies, making the layers unbearable.
    There was no comfort on a winter school day.

    The whiteness of a Michigan winter could be blinding – sometimes dressing to play in the snow meant that sunglasses would be a necessary accessory. But I've never seen the earth look so spotless. Everything mankind had ever done to the world could be remedied by a good, cleansing snow, a snow that drowned out all the contamination of humankind's doing.
    But leave it to us to ruin that pristine cleanness.
    The morning was the best time to see it, spread out evenly over everything in sight and perfectly white, a white you can't see in anything else. But the roads were always the first thing to go. The mix of dirt from the roads and the smog coming out of an endless stream of tailpipes, the salt and sand and all sorts of debris combined with the snow created another not-so-attractive aspect of a Michigan winter – slush.
    Slush was worse than not having snow to play in at all. Slush was dirty and slippery, unsightly, a reminder of something once beautiful now soiled. Snow turned to muck in only the first few minutes of rush hour.
    But Alabama has its comparison. Instead of dreaming of a white Christmas, I'm expecting a red winter.
    My first experience with the red clay of Alabama happened down the road from my grandmother's house. I went with my cousin to play on the towering piles of gravel in a nearby lot.
    When you don't have snow forts, this is what you resort to.
    When it started to rain, I didn't mind. On the contrary, I was glad – playing in the rain was always fun and it's the second best thing to playing in the snow. But as the water kept falling harder and harder and the puddles got deeper and deeper, I noticed my cousin's clothes. I could've sworn jeans were supposed to be blue.
    The color spreads like a wildfire from the base of your shoes, up the legs of your pants, until you're consumed in a dull redness that can't be removed with any amount of water, dish soap, Tide, club soda, or Greased Lightning your grandmother might have stashed away. My mom might have been mad, but I was content. I'd never seen such a thing, a landscape of red water. Sometimes, against the backdrop of a fiery mountainside, even the winter rain looks red.

    Sunny days manage to change my entire mood to cheerfulness otherwise impossible. And being sung to sleep by a lullaby of rain is peaceful and priceless. Witnessing the power of a storm opens my eyes to a strength otherwise unknown. But no type of weather I've ever experienced compares to a fresh snow, a colossal snow in the morning, before the world awakens.
    Opening the door on those mornings and staring into the immaculate whiteness quieted even my mind. It is the only silence I have ever heard, not just with my ears but in my head. The kind of silence that fills you up and hums inside your brain. The kind of silence that makes you stop thinking, an audible silence that stills your whole world.
    The closest I can come to feeling the way I did in a Michigan winter, the closest I can come to the snow, the icicles, the taste and sound of such a time and place, is when I open my freezer and stick my head in, searching for a popsicle on a hot November day.