Monthly Archives: February 2010

Once again, Facebook changes my experience of major events. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has heard of a major event first on Facebook– I’m thinking of famous deaths like Howard Zinn and Ted Kennedy especially–but now that we are snowed in, it’s making me feel less isolated. Every time I check in on Facebook, another friend has a story to tell about a snow day menu of chili and homemade cookies or heroic shoveling feats, friends snowed in at the hospitals where they work, faraway friends jealous of the snow and wondering how we’re doing. We’re trading predictions and forecasts and offering sympathy and commiseration.

Unfortunately, there are some ways of connection the Internet still can’t quite manage. My mother-in-law is in the hospital today having surgery, and while she’s only 45 miles or so away, the snow is keeping us from seeing her. Keep her in your thoughts, won’t you please?

The last time we had snowfall this legendary, the girls were about 9 months old. We were living in a rented house we would leave within the next six months, I had just started an adjunct contract for one semester, and my husband was working at an organization he would leave in a year. That house was tiny and old with an enormous ghetto palm in the backyard, and the neighbors were raising pitbulls, possibly for fighting, and an old rusted traintrack ran through the scrubby woods at the end of our block. My car windows were smashed in one morning when I went out to drive to the grocery store, and I had read The Corner twice already and wondered why I had agreed to move here. Things were definitely feeling sketchy around the edges, and we had no idea what would come next, and I only have vague memories of that record-breaking snowstorm. My whole first year of motherhood is kind of a blur, characterized by patches and streaks of panic, fear and unbelievable love. I had no idea how we were going to survive, and rarely looked more than a week ahead.

Now, the snow has come again in near-epic amounts, and we are here, in a house we will stay in for the foreseeable future. The girls are mighty second-graders who just left for a playdate with the neighbor girl, and we are a cozy and respectable (slightly boring) family, with jobs and obligations and a mortgage. We’ve got two cats, two cars, and neighbors who came out to shovel and offered whiskey and coffee once we were finished. I love my job, and my family, and this city.

The stretch of our lives book-ended by these two snowstorms is one of uncertainty, delight, and periodic upheaval. I’m here typing, listening to the clangs and hisses of the radiators, so thankful we made it through, and to see the light shining steadfast through the clouds.

We’ve got milk and toilet paper. We’ve got pot roast, sugar, flour and chocolate chips. We’ve even got brownie mix and eggs. We’ve got OnDemand for movies, we’re all home together, and we’ve got snow shovels. Tomorrow’s plans, sadly, have already been canceled, and I even brought home the papers that need to be graded. I’ve already emailed my students on how to turn in the digital presentations that were due today, and have plenty of lesson-planning work that can be done from home.

Bring on the snowpocalypse!