I gave a wide berth to the sports car in front of me. I cringed in my seat as I watched the driver start to slide down the slushy hill. The snow had started in the early morning as an icy rain, switched over to snow around noon, and had dumped a good three inches on the ground. A snowplow had recently made a quick pass on the road, but the hill was still rather treacherous.
The driver pumped his brakes in rapid-fire succession, his lights lighting-up the early evening blackness, but he had been driving too fast and now didn’t seem to be stopping. He slid down the hill, into the other lane, side-swiped a black SUV before coming to a stop in the middle the snow-covered road. He was safe, but you could tell he was annoyed at hitting the other car.
I worried that I would suffer the same fate, but I had been traveling at a much slower speed and was better able to control my car. I cruised slowly down the hill in control and was able to continue on my way. I quickly made the sign of the cross, thanking God for protecting me before being sure to keep my hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. Ten minutes later, I pulled in gingerly into my driveway. My normal 45-minute drive had become a three-hour ordeal.
Texts from Hell
When I turned the car off, I finally picked up my phone. My phone had been dinging every few minutes repeatedly for the past two hours. Before I had left my work, I had spoken to my wife so I knew it hadn’t been here. She would’ve called anyway. Sure enough, I had ten texts from a friend of mine from Florida.
The first text: “Played a round today, an absolutely gorgeous day, shot my best score ever.”
Twenty minutes later: “Loving the 80-degree temps.”
“If this keeps up, might go for a swim later.”
“Wish you were here.”
Of course, I had one thought: Asshole. He knew we were getting socked with the storm and made sure to gloat. I made a note to knock his name off the family Christmas card list. (Of course, I was joking.)
Oh, the weather outside is frightful
I chose to live in the Northeast, so you have to take the good with the bad, hot summer days, and beautiful to-die-for Fall ones with trees and leaves every color under the sun, and, yes, of course, the occasional snowstorm or cold temperatures in the teens kind of day. With those conditions as a given, I’m not a skier or snowboarder, but I still love the occasional snow day.
If there is to be one benefit of the Covid pandemic, I thought staying home in the middle of a snowstorm would be it. For the past thirty some years of my life, I’ve trudged off to work in every kind of winter day. But not now, with everyone working from home, I thought I finally had it made. I’m working from home, my wife is working from home. My whole family is generally working from home. We have to make the occasional trip to the grocery store or to pick-up takeout, but we’re generally staying close to home. We don’t have to worry now about snow. To my twisted way of thinking: it may as well snow forever. Bring it on. In more poetic words, “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.”
Looking for snowflakes in the sky. A few more thoughts on winter:
Dry as a bone
Of course, guess what? It hasn’t snowed. Snow, snow everywhere, but not a drop on the ground. Oh, we got a huge storm in December and haven’t had a whiff of the white stuff since. Old man winter can’t surely be done. It’s January for goodness sake, but still no snow. I’m writing this blog in the hopes that I’ll jinx things and Mother Nature will soon whack us with two feet.
And when I say I want a big snowstorm, I want one that sticks around for awhile. As our luck generally has it, we get a snowstorm and within a few days, temperatures rise and the snow turns to a muddy, slush. I could do without the mud season. In my perfect world, we’ll get two big storms a few weeks apart, some colder temperatures in between keeping the mud to a minimum, and then skip over the rest of the winter and spring, and jump right into sunny, 70-degree summer days.
Come on Mother Nature, what do you say? Give us your best shot!
Writing from the Heart with Brian 