It’s been pointed out that the Eskimo culture has many words for “snow”. In my family we have two.
One is “snow”, which we use when there is snow.
The other is “frost”.
It’s “family thing”. You’ve got them, with your family - chosen or domestic, that collection of words or phrases that mean something to you because you share the story behind them.
Here’s the story behind “frost”:
I’d been working 12 hour days for seven months, then nearly 18 hour ones for about three weeks – finishing a gigantic project. I was a wreck. Also, I hadn’t actually taken a vacation in seven years. Given the state of me, Zoe decided that we should get away, and booked a trip for us.
The year was changing from 1999 to 2000, eve of the new millennium: Zoe and two friends of ours planned a holiday voyage to Italy. My mother questioned traveling abroad on New Year’s Eve that particular year, but Zoe wanted to be in a place that had functioned fine for centuries before electricity, just in case we found out at midnight on Dec. 31st that we really weren’t going to have any for a while.
We didn’t have any money to speak of, so Zoe and our friend had meticulously worked out arrangements to share a little place to stay. This was an incredible challenge in such an ancient age (pre smartphones or the modern internet) as we all lived in different cities, yet she expertly engineered timetables with spy novel accuracy, allowing each of us to purchase the absolute cheapest flights available.
However, due to their incredible value, none of these flights landed right at our actual destination, so to complete the plan it was necessary that someone kind of drive around and just pick up everybody.
That someone, I soon discovered, would be Me.
The plan was that we’d
* fly to our affordable airport
* rent a car,
* run around and pick up our friends at their affordable airports
* and then drive to the place we were staying.
Besides, the car was a great investment. No train fare for four people. We could go to the grocery store and then cook for ourselves. That is Pure Savings on four wheels.
These were The Facts. I knew The Facts. I’m super good with facts.
What I didn’t ask about were the details. Those were… fuzzy, like Chewbacca-after-the-sonic-torture-device-in-Cloud-City fuzzy.
I probably agreed to it. Who knows. At that time, I hadn’t really slept in about a season and a half. I was pliable and amenable. I agreed to many things.
I dimly remember standing in the kitchen being assured that Italians drive on the right side just like in the US, so I could drive there if I wanted to. This bit of trivia soothed me, but only to the shallow depth produced during conversations one believes to be entirely theoretical.
I got home from work about 11PM the night we were flying out, showered, grabbed my suitcase, and we in hopped a cab to the airport. Our affordable tickets had us taking off in the middle of the night and then landing in the middle of what I assumed was different night, where we immediately traveled to a budget hotel straight out of a Wes Anderson fever dream – there was a shower but no tub or curtain, just a mysterious drain placed in the dead center of the bathroom floor.
It was awesome. Vacation had begun.
I am a good driver, but my grasp on reality and motor functions hadn’t yet returned, as any sleep I’d picked up on the plane or in our mysterious hotel had been countered by an understandable amount of jet lag.
We went to pick up the rental car and purchased a detailed road map.
“Where are we now?” I asked in poor Italian. The gentleman made a circle on the map.
“And where is…” I showed him the address of our destination.
He looked a bit shocked, furrowed his brow slightly… took the map, flipped it over, and drew another circle that was a good twelve inches below the first.
MY brow furrowed slightly. My wife took my arm and sped me off to the car.
We set off through the empty morning streets, trying to find the entrance to the highway.
“Hey, uh, why are those circles so far apart?” I asked her.
“We’re in Milan.” she answered.
“Oh.” I remember replying, trying to connect her answer to my question.
“And where are we going?” I asked.
“Florence.” she said, pointing at the second circle on the map, “It’s just right over here.”
I drowsily thought about Florence Henderson, the actress who played the mom on “The Brady Bunch”. That episode with the tiki doll was kinda scary. We found the highway and began driving.
After about an hour I realized we had been driving for about an hour. I’d been busy learning how to downshift instead of braking and trying to determine what speed everyone was going in kilometers, which seemed a great deal faster than 55mph.
My wife had been navigating and telling me stories, looking more and more tense.
“Are we there yet?” I asked.
“Let me check.” she replied. She looked out the window at the road signs, did a few quick calculations with the map. “We’re looking good.” she finally said. The plan was solid, but timing was very tight. And again, her answer didn’t really answer what I was asking.
I didn’t ask the right questions. I see that now. But Zoe has a singular talent for these kinds of arrangements, where everything always works out perfectly in the end. Still, at some point, probably before I started driving, I should have casually asked how far it was from Milan to Florence. That casual answer would have been “almost 200 miles”.
Running around to pick up people? I had imagined that the airports were like in New York, where LaGuardia and Kennedy and Newark are all ten miles away from each other. Ten miles is a “run around” distance. I would have experienced extreme apprehension (leaning into absolute dread) at the idea of a 200 mile road trip my first time driving in a foreign country.
All of this came to light, bit by bit, during the next hour. Many more cars were on the road, but unlike holiday traffic I was used to, they all seemed to be going faster.
“Well, you’re more than halfway done now. There’s no big deal. You’re doing fine!” Zoe said in a really encouraging tone. “From here on it’s a straight shot down this road.”
“I finally did the math and I think everybody’s going about 90 miles an hour.”
“Then it’ll go even faster.” she said, smiling.
I took it in stride until the road turned white.
“Is this…snow?” I asked her.
“I don’t think so.” she said, completely convincingly.
I looked ahead of the car. “Are those mountains?”
“No. Those are the hills.” she emphasized.
“They have white peaks.”
“Probably clouds.” She dialed the radio to find more music to listen to.
It was at this point my adrenaline finally conquered my jet lag.
“So I’m not, like, in Italy, driving a stick shift rental car going 90 miles per hour on a snowy road in the mountains?”
“That’s not snow.” she said, with an air of pure transparency. “It’s frost!”
“There’s an inch and half of it.”
“It’s heavy frost. Just keep driving.”
And I did, and her plan worked out perfectly, and we all got where we were going had a lovely and value-centered holiday.
But “frost” is now a family thing meaning “don’t look over there…you don’t need to look over there” ; a signal to just trust one another and keep going, a hybrid of “I’ve got your back!” and “don’t worry your pretty little head.”
“Hey! Is that smoke coming from the kitchen??”
“Nope… heavy frost. Dinner in ten.”
So, now you know. Welcome to the family.
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