©2011 Katya Horner. All rights reserved. (All photos in post.)

Oh, winter, forever we will be ships in the night.

Houston doesn’t do winter. We don’t. Oh sure, we do holidays. We buy sweaters. We eat chili. But we don’t do winter…in the classic sense. Bing Crosby and White Christmas and lakes iced-over — well, that’s all mythology in these parts. You know, like Zeus, like Poseidon…like the Yeti.

This week, we were to be enlightened. We were to discover “the earth revolves around the sun” and “the cell divides” and “E=mc^2″…and, if that weren’t enough, lo and behold, the mythology of winter? Not really a myth at all.

Four days we had freezing temperatures.  Four days.  Sure, to our friends up north, this is nothing.  We’re not used to it, however, and four days of freezing + one day of wintery-mix = over 1000 car wrecks in our usually fair city. I had been pining for snow something awful.  It was the water cooler talk all week.  Snow on Friday! One to four inches! Huge system! Moisture from the Gulf!  I had Wunderground on speed dial and even became a fan of one of our local weathermen on Facebook.  All day Thursday, I waited, I planned, I daydreamed.  I was beguiled by the proposition of fluffy white goodness.  Beguiled I tell you!

There’s a feeling one gets when one is let down, when the balloon deflates, the energy wanes, the music turns all sappy and Celine Dion.  Cheetahs get turned into snails.  Sprints lumber. Wind gets coughed up and “doubling over”…well, you get my point.  It didn’t snow.

That could’ve been the end of this story. “It didn’t snow.” But then where would we be, winter and I? I was determined to find winter on Friday, even if it would mean my heading to the local XYZ mart and buying a Slushie. Instead, I tried to find it in earnest. I headed to Hermann Park. It was empty. 

 Oh, sure there was a little frozen water.  But how exciting is that?  I could have just photographed my freezer. 

Oh well, the myth of it all, of winter, continues…no different than the myth of Medusa.

*Title comes from the lyrics of Tori Amos’s amazing song “Winter.”  (Link goes to Amazon.)