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Surprise Snow

Surprise Snow

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Sometimes it pays to forgo weather reports, especially when it means you can wake up to a surprise snowfall like we did this morning. Although from what I can make out, even some forecasts weren’t expecting yesterday’s rain to turn to snow in the wee hours of the morning. 

But there it was, glimpsed first at 4 a.m., when I woke up briefly, and now certified in the clear light of day.

It’s the most snow we’ve had in two years, and I doubt it will last long, but for now, it’s coating branches and grass and making the world outside look just a bit like a snow globe … finally.

Snow Sparkles

Snow Sparkles

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Puxatawney Phil has seen his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter. Though the two-inch daffodil shoots and the flowering hellebores may disagree with that assessment, the low temps and blustery winds make it easy to believe. 

As I look out my office window this gray morning I see pockets of snow still left from yesterday’s dusting, including a thick rind of the frozen stuff curled around the trampoline. It drew my eye before the sun came up, its whiteness gleaming in the dusk.

I’m glad I took an early walk yesterday, while snow still clung to every branch and  twig. As I strolled, the wind blew clumps of flakes off the boughs. The clumps exploded in a fine dust that sparkled in the air. 

(Yesterday, before the melting.)

Mom in Manhattan

Mom in Manhattan

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It is February 1, 2022, what would have been Mom’s 96th birthday. On this day, as on several previous February 1sts, I cede this space to the person who inspired me first, and inspires me still. In this post, written in 1994, Mom describes a snowy Manhattan and muses on what the city meant to her.

I have been snowbound in New York now for several days. I look out the window on 27th Street and watch the snow pile up. Hardy New Yorkers trudge through the ever-deepening snow. 

At home in Lexington when it snows, we rarely see a car drive down Colonial Drive and almost never see anyone venture out on foot. Here it is so different. The attitude is “nothing will stop us, even 18 inches of snow.” That must be a part of the chemistry that makes New York City what it is. 

I wish I had lived my life in New York City. It excites me as no other place has. There’s never been a time when I was ready to leave. And each time I have left, there’s been a little bit of myself that’s stayed behind.

(Photo: Vincent Paul, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

All the Light

All the Light

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Now that winter is settling in, it’s decided to give us another dollop of snow to freshen up the batch we received on Monday. Which means I’ve been scanning the clouds.

Yesterday we had a swirled and mottled firmament, a stingy winter sky. Though it was a montage of clearing and melting, the sky kept its distance. 

At about 3 in the afternoon, between errands, I looked up and thought: This is all the light we’re going to see. It’s a sober realization but also a practical one. In weather, as in life, it’s good to know what you have. 

Flash Gratitude

Flash Gratitude

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I have in my temporary possession a book called The Best of Brevity. It’s a compilation of short essays from the journal Brevity, which features flash nonfiction. 

The genre of flash nonfiction is relatively new to me, although I write it everyday. It is the true-to-life equivalent of flash fiction. part of a trend — probably long since peaked if I’m catching onto it — toward the brief, the ephemeral, the transitory. 

Let me add to this canon with what I’ve come to think of as flash gratitude. 

Flash gratitude is the sudden, piercing awareness of life’s blessings. Stubbing one’s toe and thinking … at least I have a toe to stub. Or hearing the gentle purr of forced-air heat and giving thanks for the warm home I sit in as a result. 

I had a moment of flash gratitude yesterday when I heard about fellow Virginians trapped for 18 to 20 hours on an impassable I-95. They were cold, hungry, frightened and, most likely, angry. They were bearing the brunt of the snow storm in a real and all-too-personal way. 

Let this be a gratitude trigger, I told myself. Whenever life looks bleak and purposeless, I will conjure up those poor souls trapped in their Kias or Toyotas or Hondas or Fords, those poor shivering drivers and passengers, and my heart will nearly burst with joy that I am anywhere else but on a snow-packed, jack-knifed-tractor-filled I-95. 

(This snow has its beauteous moments, too.)

These Boots

These Boots

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I began yesterday’s walk by pulling on a pair of ancient snow boots. These black beauties have fake fur at the top and a stubborn zipper. But once on, they can take me places.

Down the snow-packed driveway, onto the slushy, icy street and finally to a more thoroughly plowed thoroughfare. 

In the woods, trees were groaning and cracking. The snow was heavy, a burden for brittle branches, some of which gave way within earshot. 

But on the street, it was a different story. You could see the trees from a safe distance, could view the whitened trunks, the felted ferns. The boots gave me traction and confidence. Without them, I would have missed the world transformed.

Snow Day

Snow Day

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We had to wait a week or so, but we finally got our white Christmas. 

In a weather reversal that matches anything in recent memory, we went from the balmy 60s yesterday to snow, sleet and cold today, with several inches of white stuff on the ground and more on the way.

I always think of snow as this blog’s true home. A Walker in the Suburbs began in a snow storm and flourished in one. It might not have come into existence at all were it nor for the windfall of time that flowed from Snowmaggedon.

Now snow is endangered, snow days, too. A work-at-home world does not grind to a halt just because we can’t scrape off the cars and drive to the office. A major disadvantage of telecommuting, in my opinion. 

Who doesn’t need some days when the world goes away? Snow will give us those, if we let it. 

The Message

The Message

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Say what you will about the cluttered house (and I’ve said plenty), but every so often it can surprise and delight you. 

The other night, while looking for something in the closet, I jostled a tube of silver wrapping paper, which dislodged a spool of curling ribbon, which brought down an old envelope filled with photos and a note from my father-in-law, who’s been gone for almost 29 years. 

What a gift this was, to hear again from this man who, even in the midst of his own illness was writing to share holiday photos and wisdom. The note was filled with appreciation for his home, his family, for the snow that had recently blanketed the woods around his house. 

The delivery system may have been a bit unorthodox, but the message was simple: love life while you have it. 

(A different snowfall, a different woods.)

Sleet!

Sleet!

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The fluffy white stuff we were (sort of) promised yesterday has turned out to be a bunch of crunchy ice crystals instead. It’s a sleet storm, not a snow storm, that’s greeting Fairfax County this morning. 

So what to do? You can’t sled on it, can’t walk through it, can’t drive in it, can’t even admire it as it falls. 

To put on my optimistic hat (oh my, it’s getting a lot of wear these days, since I only pull it out when natural optimism fails to respond), we are not getting freezing rain, which is what pelted us all day Saturday. Sleet does not coat tree limbs and bring them down. 

Let’s praise sleet then not for what it does … but for what it fails to do. 

(A photo of what we don’t have this morning.)

All That Glitters

All That Glitters

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Walks have been slower lately, both to baby an aching foot and stay clear of icy patches on the street. I miss the faster pace. I see more of the landscape this way, true, but the landscape of late winter is not always one on which you want to linger. 

Odd remnants of leftover snow, garbage cans seemingly abandoned by the side of the road, piles of pruned and discarded azalea branches. I’m reminded of late winter in Chicago, when the snow would melt and my enthusiasm for warmer weather would be tempered by seeing what had been hiding beneath the white stuff for weeks.

The suburban landscape is more forgiving, though, the ratio of green to gray easier on the eye, and there have been times lately when the salt crystals on the road gleam like so many rough diamonds. At my slower pace I can see them sparkle.