Snow

Last night, at long last, I experienced a good sleep. It was Ambien-free, dream-filled, and deliciously uninterrupted. I awoke in the morning to blue sky and sunshine and this New York Times headline on my Twitter feed: "While you slept, 650,000 lost power and hundreds were stranded on roads..."  

Talk about a Debbie Downer headline...but my action in itself requires me to admit to three peculiar truths: that I reach for my iPad while still in bed for an immediate infusion of news and email, that I actually have a Twitter account and have begun using it as an information source and a prompt to reading material, and yes, I continue to look to the New York Times as a connection to the East coast I left behind decades ago.

But I've been thinking about snow. I'm remembering the initial wonder of a snowfall, how even before you opened your eyes in the morning you somehow knew it had snowed, how a certain aspect of quiet and light announced it...and everything seemed new and forgiven, all flaws and edges muffled. Or the precise instant when rain transformed itself to snowflakes, illuminated by a streetlight, and you just happened to be watching, and everyone was enchanted for a moment.

Functioning in it is of course another matter entirely. Believe me, I remember the misery too. I have lived in Syracuse, Chicago, D.C., New York...places like that. When I first came to California, I was still clinging to the world's ugliest down parka. I was Nanook of the North.

One of my favorite memories of a snowstorm, though, involves a trip I took to Boston with Monte and Miranda when she was first visiting potential colleges...which means, incredibly, it has been almost ten years since this particular journey. All the reports were of a big storm coming...billed (as it seems they often are) as possibly the blizzard of the century.

I remember stepping from a train into the cold air, the kind of cold that literally stings, and every bone of my being sounded alarms. As Scarlett O'Hara was to hunger, I am to cold. I've done it, didn't like it, and, "As God is my witness, I shall never be cold again!" Or at least that's the hope.

Anyway, whether or not this was a hundred-year blizzard, let me tell you, it was big. Swirls of snowflakes whitened the sky and obscured what was in front of us, and the streets were soon dusted  with it, and before long, the cars were simply mounds of white...large, plump loaves along the curbs. We were staying at a small hotel in Cambridge, and we decided to hole up for the night as quickly as we could, but not before ordering a pizza from a place across the street, which we carried up to our room.

We turned the television on and made ourselves cozy, the three of us in sweaters and pajamas amongst the covers of an oversized bed, the heat on high, the pizza in its open box before us, still bubbly and aromatic...and the movie Chinatown was on. Yes, Chinatown. Could there be a more perfect, L.A.-themed classic? Sure, it's a disturbing story, but what we keyed into most of all was that warm, familiar California light.

Meanwhile, outside the steamy windows, the streets below were quietly filling with snow. I took a picture, and that's it above, at the very top, not a great photo, but it reminds me of that beautiful evening with my tiny family. And it was exactly as the poet Alden Nowlan wrote: "...there was nobody in this country/except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder/of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love."

As I said, it's my favorite snow memory, but I suppose it has very little do with snow.

An ironic addendum: Miranda did decide to go to school in Boston anyway. I figured it would be fine because the cold would eventually get to her and she'd eagerly return. In fact, there was another big blizzard during her very first semester. Ah, I thought wickedly, my satisfaction will come even sooner than I'd anticipated.

Her reaction: "It was magical! We borrowed trays from the dining hall and used them as sleds to coast down Beacon Hill." (In the moonlight, no less.)

And then she went even further from home. But I digress.

Anyway, we'll always have Chinatown.