Let It Snow

We’ve gotten a lot of snow this winter here in the Northeast. The way people have been talking, you’d think we’ve been getting two to three storms per week, though if I really think back, that has happened only a couple of times. People I know, and even some I don’t know, have complained to me about the snow. It seems that a lot of people are sick and tired of the snow.

We haven’t really gotten that much snow the last couple of winters so maybe people are out of practice when it comes to winter, but come on, we live in the Northeast and it’s winter! It’s going to snow and it’s not always going to be at a convenient time. I get it to a certain point; you have to clear the walkway and the driveway, you have to clean off the cars, and then you have to drive to or from work in a snowy mess. It’s not all fun and games as an adult like it was when we were kids.

It seems to me that we used to get more snow when I was growing up than we do now. I don’t remember many winters where there wasn’t a decent amount of snow or when we weren’t able to be skating on the ponds. That was just part of growing up – or was it? I looked back and found a website that listed the annual snowfall in Boston, MA by month. Covering the years from when I can actually remember things up through high school, this is what I found:

 Season       Total (inches)

1966-67         60.1

1967-68         44.8

1968-69         53.8

1969-70         48.8

1970-71         57.3

1971-72         47.5

1972-73         10.3

1973-74         36.9

1974-75         27.6

1975-76         46.6

1976-77         58.5

1977-78         85.1

1978-79         27.5

Throw out 1972-73 as an outlier (what happened that year?) and 1977-78 (“The Blizzard of 1978” skewed those numbers) and we’ve averaged 46.3 inches per season. This season we’ve gotten 42 inches, so I’d say we’re pretty much average this year. Maybe some whiners around here need to get out and do some fun stuff in the snow instead of cursing their very life for living where it snows. Maybe the adults need to go back to their childhood and have some fun.

Winter didn’t stop us from going outside and having fun when we were growing up. We went skating, we went sledding, and we built snow forts and had snowball fights. We played Alaska, a game where we pretended we were in Alaska, caught in some huge blizzard, and we had to rescue someone. We made noises that we thought sounded like the wind, we threw snow up in the air to make it be like it was snowing out of control. We pretended we were rolling down the side of a mountain or, gasp, falling over the side of a cliff! Lucky for us, we had our buddies with us to keep us from plunging to our deaths.

We didn’t complain about the snow, that’s for sure. The more the better as far as we were concerned. It gave us more choices of what to do. And that’s what it comes down to for all the people who’ve been whining about the snow – choice. You can choose to see the negative (clearing the driveway, cleaning off the cars, driving in the snow) or you can choose to see the positive (the beauty of the bushes, trees, and lawns coated in white, sledding, skiing). I’m choosing to let my inner (winter) child enjoy the snow.   

Finding Nemo

As we continue to dig out from Nemo here in the Northeast, I’m looking outside at a nice sunny day and the temperature in the 40’s. It always amazes me to see what a difference a couple of days can make. We had snow from early Friday morning until the middle of the day on Saturday, with plenty of wind to go along with it. When I finally got out and about, there was over two feet of snow, lots of fallen trees and tree limbs, and roads that were half as wide as they should be.

When the flakes finally stopped falling, my son, my wife and I went out to clear the driveway and dig out the cars, which you could barely even see. The snow was up to my mid-thighs in some places where it drifted and we had to go out the cellar door that’s covered by a deck because the front and side doors had so much snow against them we couldn’t open them. Fortunately, I have a snow blower. Unfortunately, since the snow was so deep it sputtered and choked and almost didn’t make it. It took us a little over two hours to get the driveway cleaned and the cars unburied. By the time we headed in, our faces were so frozen it was hard to complete simple sentences.

I’m not complaining. Last week just happened to be the 35^th anniversary of the notorious Blizzard of 1978, and though we didn’t get that much more snow than Nemo dumped on us, that particular storm was much worse. In the aftermath of the Blizzard of 1978, it took six of us parts of two days to shovel the driveway and clean off the cars. We did have a huge driveway, probably big enough to fit ten cars easily, but we had no snow blower. We went out after breakfast and started shoveling, went in for lunch, and then went back out and shoveled until it was getting dark. For two days! Comparatively speaking, two hours with a snow blower doesn’t seem so bad, even if we were pretty cold.

I remember so many times as a kid when we were outside sledding or having snowball fights and we refused to go inside the house despite being numb from the cold. I think we knew that once we went in, we weren’t coming out again (unless we were playing ice hockey and just went home for lunch – that was different). We’d go in, take off all our wet, snowy clothes and sit in front of the fireplace. I swear that for the first ten minutes I couldn’t even feel the heat from the fire. I could have put my frozen feet right into the fire and not felt the flames, but the smell of flesh mixed with dirty socks might have been lethal to all of us. Mom would make us some hot chocolate and we’d sit there for a while and thaw out. That’s why once you were in, you were in for good. 

It was all about choices at that point. You could sit in front of the cozy fire in some warm, dry clothes, or you could put on your still wet jacket, gloves and hat and go back outside into the cold. Though there were some instances we did go back outside, the decision to just stay put was fairly easy. Warm vs. cold; dry vs. wet. On those days, Swiss Miss Instant Cocoa (with mini marshmallows!) was like drinking liquid Godiva chocolate. There was nothing better. We sipped it slowly, not only because it was hot, but also because we just wanted to make it last.

Though the days of sipping hot chocolate in front of a roaring fire are long gone, snow storms in New England are not. We don’t get as many as we used to, or so it seems, but every once in a while we get whacked upside the head by a blizzard. For me, there’s no sledding, snowball fights or playing in the snow anymore, just a strong desire to be inside where it’s warm and dry.

Spring Already?

I know it’s only mid-March, but spring is in the air. It’s not just because Spring Training for baseball is up and running, or because the NHL regular season is coming to an end, or because there’s about 20,000 birds in my yard and its surroundings every morning. It’s mostly due to the mild winter we’ve had. It really already feels like spring.

I’ve enjoyed this winter. I haven’t used the snow blower once this season and I’ve only had to shovel snow twice, and that was more like pushing the light, fluffy snow off the driveway. It hasn’t been very cold either, with only a few days where the temperatures have been below 20 degrees. If this is the effect of global warming, then bring it on! I could handle ten more just like this one. Of course, this is from my perspective as a middle-aged man. As a kid I would have absolutely hated this winter.

The ponds near my house never even froze this winter. Well, maybe they got a thin layer of ice on the top, but they never froze enough for any winter activities. There was no ice fishing this winter, no snowmobiles racing across the ice and snow, and most importantly, no ice skating. Hockey on the frozen ponds was one of the major things that got me through winter as kid. We’d race home from school, dump the books, get our gear and get an hour or two in before it was too dark to see in front of you. On weekends we’d be at the pond from 9am until it was dark, with a quick break for lunch around noon. I don’t think there was ever a winter we didn’t get in a lot of pond hockey from November to March. That would have been unthinkable.

We also got a lot more snow than we do now. If the ponds were buried beneath a pile of snow, we’d shovel it off or use sheets of plywood and push it out of the way to make an area big enough for a decent game. Snow really didn’t stop us, unless there was just too much to move and then we’d wait a few days or a week and then move the snow. While we were waiting, we’d be sledding, building snow forts for snowball fights or playing street hockey when the road was clear. If we missed a day or two of school, even better! That left us more time to be doing fun stuff. At least it was fun then; now, not so much. 

I just can’t imagine going through the whole winter as a kid and not being able to go sledding, have snowball fights or play ice hockey. Street hockey wasn’t a bad short-term solution, but it was nowhere near as good as ice hockey. If you’ve ever been hit by one of those orange street hockey balls or pucks when it is cold outside, you know what pain is. Maybe that's why we used tennis balls that had lost their bounce. Somehow, getting hit with a puck while playing ice hockey never seemed as bad as getting hit with one of those street hockey balls. Sledding down our own Mount Everest was always fun, as was the hot chocolate and roaring fire when we were done. Those were the carefree days of childhood.

But as the temperature outside climbs into the 60’s and there’s not even a hint of any snow around my area, I just have to smile. There’s no sadness here on my part. I don’t skate on the ponds anymore, I haven’t gone sledding since the kids were little and the last time I had a mini snowball fight my shoulder hurt for two days. Honestly, I’d rather be sitting on the back deck in the warm sunshine than be sitting in a cold pile of snow after slipping and falling. These are the not-so-carefree days of adulthood. Call it the year without a winter or just an early spring, it makes no difference. Spring is in the (warm) air.   

Perseverance

I saw quite an amazing sight last week. I was in my upstairs bathroom, which looks out the back of the house onto the backyard and the conservation land behind us, and I heard a major commotion among the birds that inhabit the hundreds of trees out there. Now the birds are always chirping away and can be a bit noisy, but this was way beyond that. Being the inquisitive guy that I am, I looked out the window to see if I could pinpoint the source of the uproar. Suddenly, a hawk exploded out of an opening between the trees being chased by 5 or 6 other birds and was flying straight at the window I was looking out of. For a few seconds I thought it was going to crash right into the house! Then at the last second, the hawk pulled up and to the left and went over the house. I wish I had a video camera to catch the scene, but I probably would have had to answer a lot of questions on why I had a video camera in the bathroom in the first place.

The funny thing was that later that day I saw similar scenes twice. One time the hawk was flying for his life again and the other time it was sitting in the top of a tree in my neighbor’s yard being dive-bombed by a group of birds, each one taking its turn trying to move the much bigger hawk. I watched for about 10 minutes, the hawk almost falling twice, but spreading its wings to regain balance before it finally flew away on its own terms. Whatever the hawk was after, I hope it was worth the trouble it was going through because it was obvious that it was worth the fight to all the other birds involved. While I admired the determination of the smaller birds in keeping the hawk away, I also admired the perseverance of the hawk in going after its prize.

Perseverance is a bit strange when you think about it. There are dueling clichés regarding perseverance: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” versus “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. So you’re either trying hard or you’re insane. I guess it depends on your outlook – or possibly the outcome. We all love the stories of people who persevere, sometimes for years, until they finally achieve their goal, many of them when others have given up on them. We don’t really remember people who persevere for years and come up short every time, never achieving their goal. Most people love happy endings.

I remember how much my kids persevered when they were little. Everything they learned to do was learned through much perseverance. Everything from getting themselves dressed, to walking, to playing games to riding a bike all took time to master, to get right. Walking is especially a great example of persevering. How many times does a child fall down when they’re beginning to walk? Yet they continue to try, try again. Is that insane? Of course it isn’t. Imagine if they were like most adults are; fall down 3 or 4 times and that’s it, they’re done. I can almost hear them (well, if they could talk at that point in their lives), “I tried to walk, but I can’t do it. I tried. It’s too hard.” No one would ever walk.

Like many other people, I’m facing issues in my life right now. Some days I’m tempted to just give in and give up, to not persevere and get the issues fixed. In the short term that would be a lot easier. Most days, I’m ready to try and work on those issues and get them resolved. Unfortunately, there are little things pecking away at me, chasing me from my goal and making me feel like I can’t do it. I sometimes feel like the hawk, perched on a high branch in a tree, being dive-bombed by one thing after another and teetering on the brink of falling. Then my wife or one of my kids will do or say something nice or encouraging and I regain my balance and get myself upright again. Unlike the hawk, I know the prize is worth the trouble I’m going through now, all the perseverance and trying. It’s called family.

The Joy of Sledding

This past week, we got our second blizzard in the last couple of weeks, about a foot of snow. We haven’t got this much snow this quickly in a long time. As I was outside cleaning off the cars and clearing the driveway with the snow blower, it reminded me of when I was a kid. It just seems like we got more snow back in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. Maybe its just selective memory, but I remember us having more snow back then.

We loved when it snowed when we were kids. After helping shovel the driveway and the walkway, we could do whatever we wanted. We’d make little snow forts and have snowball fights, sometimes just in our yard and sometimes with our friend across the street. I don’t ever remember anyone getting hurt, but I do remember people, including me, taking a snowball right to the face. After shaking off the realization that I was stupid enough to stick my head up at just the right (or in this case, wrong) time, I’d wipe my face off and make a couple of tightly packed snowballs to get my revenge. By tightly packed, I mean hard. And if someone was cackling a little too loud about their strike, I’d make a couple, take off the gloves and rub them up a little to make ice balls. You get hit with one of them and you’re gonna know you got hit!

Then my son came out (no, he wasn’t helping this time, but he did help last storm) and asked if he could go sledding with some friends. Sledding, that was something we did all winter and right in my backyard most of the time. We had a hill in my backyard that we thought was as big as Mount Everest; it was actually more of a molehill than a mountain. However, that didn’t stop us from having the time of our lives out there. We’d be out there for hours, taking our 15 – 20 second runs down our “hill”. That is not a typo; it took about 15 seconds to go from top to bottom. We usually used plastic saucers or these plastic sheets that rolled up with handles to hold onto. I have no idea what they were called, but you probably couldn’t buy them today due to liability concerns. We did use sleds sometimes, but the other devices made the hill packed, smooth and fast. Toboggans were too big for this hill.

We had our course mapped out and named after us and our friends. At the top, you had Steve’s Start, named after my younger brother. Steve’s Start led into Smitty’s Straightaway, which was just a part that went, you got it, straight. Then the course went either to the left or the right. If you went over to the left, you went into Carl’s corner, which we built up with snow to keep you from going into some thorns and bushes, and then went down into our back yard. If you went over to the right, you went off Joe’s Jump into Kevin’s Canyon then down into the backyard. Joe’s Jump was just a part that dropped about a foot, but we’d build up a small snow ramp right before it so that when you went over it, you felt like you were flying! When the snow got packed and hard there were quite a few sore rumps from hitting Kevin’s Canyon on those plastic devices.

After spending hours outside in the cold and the snow and being chilled to the bone, we’d go in and have some hot chocolate. Before there was Swiss Miss, Mom made it on the stove with milk and cocoa in a pan. If we were lucky, they’d even be a fire in the fireplace to dry us out and warm us up even more. I don’t know which was better, the hot chocolate or the fire. Ah, those were the days.