Forgive me for combining holidays here–but it’s only at Valentine’s Day that I’m able to reflect with the type of retrospective so common at the turn of the New Year. I’ve always been slow, thoughtful, deliberate, late. Though taking the two holidays  together makes more sense in context. For 2009 was the year of love, or almost love, or not really love at all, or self-love perhaps. It was the first year of my life as Nick, and the first year my gender and body were no longer impassable obstacles to my becoming involved physically and emotionally with others. It’s no surprise that I spent the year in relationships, four of them to be exact, though “relationships” is a term I’m using in its broadest sense to include engagement with another in a serial (and for me) monogamous (though unintentional) fashion.

I met the first girl at the start of 2009, literally, midnight-ish on New Years. Re-met would be a more appropriate term since she used to hang out at my house years ago, flirt with my back in the day when I’d run away scared of anyone who wanted my clothes off. When I re-met this girl and she saw my room, she shook her head in disappointment. All I had was one map of the world. For the three years I’d lived there, it was the only thing that made me feel comfortable, a map with its millions of escape routes. I didn’t have a home. Home was something I couldn’t create inside my body and it was something I couldn’t create in my surroundings.

Shortly after we started hanging out, I asked this girl to make a decoration suggestion. “Curtains for your bay windows and a comfortable reading chair,” she replied. The chair is where I’m sitting as I write this, my windows framed by my handsome blue and gold curtains.

I didn’t get to ask the second person for room advice. We never spent an entire night together. But he showed me boundaries, the beauty of the queerest of bodies, helped landscape my internal home. The third suggested a duvet cover for my bed, and how her of her to have the perfect one, to give it to me and make a home for me to rest. The fourth picked out a plant, bringing life into my home.

I’m still feeling the fourth, enough to know it’s time to regroup, time to be alone inside this home I’ve created, time to watch the leaves on my new plant, the hair on my new body grow. I’m feeling her enough to know that today would be a special challenge, and oh, how I love challenges.

I had decided Rusty would be my Valentine long ago, looked forward to yoga today for all that I knew it would be and all that I didn’t. There’s something about his tone, part pleading, wisdom and command, the way he says, “Don’t miss this moment,” so that even if my legs are trembling, and I’m so uncomfortable I want to call it pain, I cannot help but think, “Do not miss this moment,” and that when I’m so beat I can’t see through the sweat in my eyes and he says, “I want this to be the most challenging part of your day. I want this to be the most challenging part of your week,” I know that I can hold sadness, loneliness, loss, and even more, that I don’t want to miss the moment.

The hardest part was towards the end, a two-minute meditation, stillness. Rusty challenged us here too, offered us a couple mantras and goaded us to try them. “I dare you,” he said. “For two minutes, I dare you to repeat to yourself: I am worthy of love. I am worthy of love.” I certainly believe it and I certainly tried, but let’s just say my mind wandered a little. How easy it is to give love to others, and how easy it is to receive love, but  how very very hard it is for me to sit with my own love.

He ended class with words he’s said a lot since he opened his new studio though the meanings are infinite. “Welcome home,” he said

“Welcome home,” I said to myself.

If you wake up at 5 am and leave your house in San Francisco, carrying boots and a snowboard and holding umbrella over your head, you will look out of place near the Civic Center BART station.

If a friend picks you up and together you drive East, the sun will rise before you reach Davis and by Colfax a white sheen will glaze the ground.

If you head up into the foothills of the Sierras, you will not notice the the branches of evergreen trees buckling under the weight of the snow. Because there is no blizzard and the windshield is clear and the tires grip the road, it will take a moment for you to notice that the tourist information signs are almost completely buried in the snow, and that prison-high ice walls guide the cars, as if a huge canon ball was shot through a glacier to make the road.

If you turn off the highway and pick up a hitchhiker, she will work at the local ski resort and give you a free ticket that saves you $60. And you won’t feel bad about not reading the newspaper that morning and forgetting about crime, destruction and hate.

If you arrive at Sugarbowl by 9:30 am, you will get a prime parking spot because it is a Monday. On a Monday, someone in a lift line will shout, “Who’s supposed to be at work?” And someone will yell “Yahoo,” and another “Woohoo.”

If for days the weather forecast has said “dumping,” the chutes will be padded and the cliffs covered, and there will powder fields the size of Greenland, and freshies for all. There will be tree runs and face shots and the whole surfing the earth, lost in the enchanted white forest fairy tale.

If there are no lift lines, you can do powder laps all day and the wind, poor visibility, and temperatures in the teens will not deter you.

If you ride until 3:30 pm, the sun will throw off its muslin sheath and trigger one last burst of adrenaline before the Tiger Balm turns to mercury in your muscles.

If you are on the road by 4 pm, chasing the the pink horizon, the sky will be black by the time you hit Davis. And again, at Civic Center BART station, you will be the only one with a snowboard, boots and an umbrella.

If you experience such a sublime day, you will find escape from the dreariness of the urban rain, the responsibilities of the to-do list, and the nagging necessity of finding a job.

If you reach a state of euphoria, you will have a hard time returning to your actual life. You might even end up writing about yourself in the second-person while using a bizarre unnecessary conditional repetition structure.

Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, rain pummeled San Francisco. The water cascaded down hills, power outages darkened the city, umbrellas broke and trees almost did. The rain in the city turned to snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. A winter storm warning went into effect through Sunday evening: blizzard like conditions, stay off the road. Depending on the elevation and location, anywhere from 3 to 6 feet of snow had fallen in the Lake Tahoe area. Another foot was expected on Saturday night.

At 8pm on Saturday night, several hours after Interstate 80 re-opened, I ate a pound of roasted brussels sprouts, lightly salted, and got in the passenger seat of Josie’s Grand Cherokee to start what in good weather is a 3-4 hour journey to Tahoe. Our plan was to stop short of the foothills, or stop when the snow became too heavy. We promised loved ones we would be smart, and we would have been if not for Elena. While others had bailed on the trip because of the storm, Elena had rented a monstrous Chevy Blazer. She threw four just-in-case snow chains into the trunk and led our two-car caravan into the white out.

By the time we hit 2,000 feet, we were driving head-on into a snowflake fusillade. It was disorienting, like trying to see in the pitch-black while being doused with confetti. Then there was the fallen snow, piles of it, and it was this that demarcated the highway. The road snow was so fresh and deep, you could hear the tires crunch down on it. The numerous plows we passed could not keep up. I called Elena and told her that Josie and I would be pulling off the road to find a motel. “What?” Elena said, naturally cheery. “Why would you do that?” I mentioned some stuff about not wanting to die. “This is what you do,” she said. “You drive slow, fall into a line and follow the red lights. The banks are too high, you can’t fly off a cliff. I’m not going to lie. It’s much further. But we’ll get there.”

Her soothing words carried us at 25 mph the next 1,000 vertical feet. And by then it was too late for a different course of action. The unlit, unplowed off-ramps looked more dangerous than the road.

The brussels sprouts in my stomach weren’t sitting too well. My hands shook too much to select music. I couldn’t concentrate on playing a game. Josie hunched forward, bent her head and tried to find a square of vision through the icy windshield. Occasionally, she would open the window, time a quick break between the wipers and use her left hand to grab a piece of ice from the windshield.

“Can you see?” I asked. “Because I can’t see. Do you want me to do anything with the defroster?” I asked. “Are you tired?” I asked. “How are you feeling? Are you doing okay? I prefer it when you go slower. Keep a large braking distance. Two hands on the wheel. Always. Really, you can see? Stop checking your phone. Should I call road conditions again. 25, that’s good, that makes me happy. Maybe we should stop. We can sleep in the car. Remember, we promised our loved ones we wouldn’t do anything crazy.”

Josie doesn’t hear very well. She couldn’t hear the number of times I asked if she could see. Following everything she pseudo-heard, she said, “What?” and looked at my lips. This prompted me to repeatedly say, “Eyes on the road,” and eventually I gave up on conversation altogether.

We passed car after SUV after car, immobile on the side of what appeared to be the road, headlights on, wheels spinning in the snow. Should this happen to us, I imagined we’d sleep in the car. At midnight, close to the 7,085 foot mountain pass, we were forced to a complete stop. Highway closed. People took this opportunity to step outside their vehicles and relieve themselves or stretch their legs. Some were wearing t-shirts and sneakers, others hats and jeans. I’m not sure what I expected, some sign of a death-wish across the forehead, or a visible, irrefutable reason to be on the road blazing in the eyes, but everyone I saw looked hum-drum regular.

Yet, everyone around me was nuts. I’m comfortable with neurotic nuts, people like Woody Allen, Seinfeld, Ellen, people like me, people whose crazy is best kept in check by a city. But stuck on Donner Pass at midnight in the middle of a blizzard, I realized I had a different kind of crazy in me. The kind of crazy willing to leave safety and reason behind in search of perfect powder.

I’d been around this type of wacko before. A few years ago, I spent the winter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Guys self-dubbed the dawn patrol would walk through my living room at 6 a.m, rousting my roommate to wait in line a couple hours before the mountain opened to ride “first tram.” I had friends who hiked into the back country in questionable conditions, and one who found himself lost and alone, waist-deep in a canyon. People died in avalanches; someone always does. That winter, I’d considered myself a cautious visitor to such a lifestyle, thankful for my freshies, but not willing to fight Mother Nature for the rights to her property.

I met people in Jackson who wanted little more in life than to carve tight lines through trees and leave open faces with their territorial tracks. I met people who followed the weather radar like those around me now are following the presidential primaries. I didn’t notice it at the time, but that powder lust, the obsession, it got into my blood. The spray of a face shot, the float of a turn, those memories stayed with me like opportunistic viruses awaiting a storm. I never planned to be like this, but my body understood why people go to such great lengths to find an untouched snow field.

I would’ve gotten off the road if I were on my own or I never would’ve started to begin with, and although I didn’t enjoy one second of the 6 hour driving adventure, if I was honest with myself, I was mostly thankful that someone crazier than me, like Josie, was willing to drive, and that someone like Elena, even crazier than both of us, was willing to lead.

An accident was cleared, and the road opened again, and shortly thereafter, I stopped looking through my small square of visibility in the windshield. I didn’t need to see because I wasn’t driving.

Josie and Elena drove us on and on and on. There are many places to stay near the ski mountains of Tahoe, but we drove across the goddamn Nevada State line for a free place to stay in Incline Village. We never made it up the hill to the house. The unplowed road was too steep, and after several attempts up and much out-of-control tobogganing back down, we found a motel. It was 2 a.m. Adrenaline was too high for sleep and poor Josie kept waking herself up to focus her eyes on the road.

The next two days of riding were some of the sickest of my life. There was so much snow, more snow than I’ve ever had for myself inbounds on a mountain. I went so hard and my muscles, my quads and my calves, are so tight I can barely walk now, days later. I’m still not sure if that drive was worth it, if it is worth it to make poor decisions that sometimes result in amazing experiences. But I’m almost positive I would do it again.

About a week before Christmas, I stopped being able to cook for myself and clean my dishes. All of a sudden pouring a drink into a glass turned into a Herculean task and I started to chug chocolate soy milk directly out of the carton, occasionally following it with a swig of peppermint schnapps. Inside my San Francisco house, I found myself wearing two sweatshirts (one with Santa dunking a basketball), two pairs of sweatpants and a fleece hat at all times. I snacked for days on homemade fudge and baklava leftover from a party I didn’t attend. Doing anything outside of the recline position was a major accomplishment. The only activity I could commit to was renting DVDs. I have now watched Blood Diamond, The Family Stone, The Namesake, much of Season 3 of The Office, the Bourne Ultimatum on Christmas Eve, and as my own self-reward, a rent five movies go to the theater at no additional guilt, I saw The Savages on Christmas Day.

I don’t particularly like it when others are off from work–Labor Day, Independence Day, Presidents’ Day, Good Friday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day—all the major holidays really. Keep that stock market ticker streaming. I’m not a holiday person, which means I get called a Grinch around Christmas, I get depressed on my birthday, and I’d prefer to be sleeping before midnight on New Year’s Eve. It’s the whole mass celebration, complete with overcrowding in public places, and communal bonding business, not to mention a break from work that I don’t need. Every day is a holiday for the unemployed, and the only way to take a break from irresponsibility and relax from relaxation is to develop bed sores.

Chistmas is the worst of the worst when it comes to holidays. Some of it is just the pre-winter doldrums, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas that I still equate with university finals and the waiting period before I can reasonably expect the pow pow to blanket the mountains for good riding conditions. Maybe because I’m long gone from college and I’m car-less, financially challenged, and far from the sickest of peaks, but it’s the cultural and familial traditions that got to me this year.

Kristina (the g-friend) flew East well over a week ago to be with her family. They do the whole tree and wrapped presents thing, the kids running down the stairs while their dad video tapes on Christmas morning. They prepare for this day with talk of carolling, dreams of snow, and marathons of White Christmas, Holiday Inn, It’s a Wonderful Life, Muppet Christmas Carol, and Elf. Pretty standard, except that there is a pre-viewing competitive test built around these movies, and each sibling’s standing in the family is determined by the test results. This is very similar to the way my family does things—when we’re not having a physical or intellectual contest, we like to rate and rank the gourmet food bought by each person—and we are able to transcend the religion/tradition divide in the relationship.

This is the part where I invoke Adam Sandler and do the woe is Jew thing. I will say that people tried. People wished me a “Happy December 25th” and offered me stale gelt, and this year I arrived too early for latkes and apple sauce at one party and too late at another, but at least the parties happened. In the past few years, my main gripe about Hanukkah has been the timing of early December, so early we’d be better off celebrating it in combination with Thanksgiving instead of as the premature cousin of Christmas.

But the sad truth is that my family has no Hanukkah traditions either, unless you count the four or us figthing over which side to light the menorah from before my mother implores us to use our “singing voices” for an off-key, off-tempo blessing read in transliteration off the side of the candle box. I have not been home in many years to light the candles with my family, and instead I am used to receiving an email addressed to the “heathens” and kindly informing my brother and me the wrong day that Hanukkah begins.

As for the tradition of presents, we had a point system. My brother and I each had approximately 8 points worth of presents. So, if we wanted a Nintendo, that might be like 6 points. A game might be worth 2 points. Rather than providing my parents with a list of our desires, we would shout out presents to calibrate the point system, compiling our list from the most undervalued of gifts. By early January we had usually overshot our allotted points and my mom would say something like, “I think you’ve used up all your presents there kiddies.” And then to prove we were true Jews, my dad would buy us a few more presents.

After Hanukkah ended, we did not put up stockings or trees or drink eggnog or say Merry Christmas. We went skiing, or flew, or ate Chinese food on December 25th.

I’m not sure why it took FOR-EVER for Christmas to pass this year, nor do I know why I was incapacitated for the time leading up to it. But I’m elated that it is over.