Snow big deal

“Blizzard” has become something of a dirty word in recent years. That comes with age. What once was an opportunity for all-day video game marathons and movie matinees on the television is now a daunting assignment: Shovel your way out from underneath nature’s diarrhea-dump of snow, try not to blow out your back, and stumble into work with icy nostrils and a renewed distaste for the masochists’ paradise that is winter. Then maybe in the evening you start looking at time-share opportunities in Arizona.

 

And here I thought we’d have a chance at avoiding that fate this season. I am, to put it mildly, a foolishly optimistic ninny.

 

Can I be blamed for that? We’ve had it pretty easy so far, you have to admit. After a mild December, I delighted in what appeared to be the complete and total wrongness of the Farmer’s Almanac, which predicted a snowy, brutal winter – the kind of winter you hear old farts reminiscing about over gin and coffee in front of a crackling fireplace.

 

“Remember the blizzard of ’68, Herb? We were buried in snow up to our nipples and had to burrow our way to the mailbox like moles. We survived by wrapping ourselves in molten lead. It was all Bev and I could do to keep from going stir-crazy, but hey, nine months later Junior was born, so it wasn’t a total loss! Hawhawhaw!”

 

Well, I don’t have a Bev.

 

What I do have is bitterness over the relentless one-two punch we’ve taken on the chin this week. I still don’t put much stock in the Farmer’s Almanac – historically, it’s been right only about 50 percent of the time, which are the same odds you get from coin flips and lucky rabbits’ feet – but at the moment, it appears its authors are laughing their silly heads off. Winter’s been storing its nastiest accumulation for a handful of epic events, the kind that revive those old snow-day memories like reanimated zombies.

 

Only, like a zombie, this new incarnation of the snow day is twisted, evil, and should be shotgun-blasted in the face. Not to be graphic or anything.

 

It’s all about the stage of life in which you find yourself. Hop in the time machine with me and take a trip back to January 1994, will you? I was 12 years old, a sixth-grader at Martel Elementary School in Lewiston, and I had nothing ahead of me but time – oceans of it, stretching into an infinite future of Batman comics and rock candy. Because time moved so slowly, a single snow day held the promise of everlasting adventure: Snow forts and snowball fights, books and blankets, cheese ravioli for breakfast. There were no rules during a snow day. It was a temporary vacation from my own life, a connection to my rough-living forebears, who spent four months of the year nibbling on pre-dried squirrel meat and blowing on their fingers to keep them from falling off. In my young boy’s imagination, I could envision myself as a stoic Puritan settler, but with the bonus that I could break from this fantasy at whim, curl under an electric blanket, and play “Super Metroid” while blasting “I Saw The Sign” by Ace of Base. That was a big song that year. YouTube it, it’s embarrassing.

 

Earlier this week I experienced my first real snow day since those halcyon times, although the vibe was pretty far removed from the ice-chucking days of yore. For one thing, it wasn’t a true snow day in that I worked. Granted, I worked from home, taking frequent breaks to experiment with which foods in my home could be shoehorned into a sandwich. But still, work is work. I don’t remember doing much math homework during snow days when I was 12. Or any other days, for that matter.

 

The other big change is that I’m now The Responsible One. A snow day is no free pass for The Responsible One. Far from it. No, The Responsible One is charged with Buying Provisions, Sticking It Out, and Maintaining the Home, all phrases which warrant capitalization. I’ve traded snow forts for shovels, video games for ice-caked eyebrows, and movie marathons for pushing cars out of snowbanks. Jack Frost holds us hostage so completely you’d think he was an armed terrorist. The difference is that armed terrorists tend to be nicer.

 

There is, however, something to be said for coziness. Once the sore-muscle chores have been completed, and the cold showered out of my bones, all that’s left is hot tea, good books, and a giant bowl of Fruity Pebbles – which, if fired from a cannon, could blow a hole in the hull of a submarine. 

 

It’s a far cry from a child’s winter nirvana, chiefly because it’s a mere reward for the hard work and spirit-sucking responsibility that comes with cold-weather survival. But it’s something. This past Tuesday, I stood at my kitchen window, warm beverage in hand, watching nature’s tempest transform my street into one of Jupiter’s frozen moons, the glow of streetlamps my only indication that I remained on Earth. Angry winds lashed my building, snowdrifts formed knowing smirks of white powder around the edges of the windowsill, and I knew the following morning would be all grunting and heaving, scraping and groaning. Yet there was a pocket of time – the ever-fleeting present – in which I remembered those giddy mornings lying next to the radio, listening for that blissful cancellation announcement. The long afternoons, the snowmen and sledding; those old feelings are only a snowstorm away, if you’re lucky enough to know which parts of yourself to access. Maybe you’ve got to be in a certain mindset,  but there was a moment, standing there, when I thought, “You know what? This is okay.”

 

Then I tossed on some Ace of Base. ’Cause when you’re feeling nostalgic, man, only those old sweet sounds will do.