I have an online call at 4:30, so I plug the laptop in at my downstairs desk. Then James and I take a quick ride to the Hallmark store, use our coupons and free card credits, stock up on greetings for the month ahead. We stop at Tim Hortons, almost deserted at 3:15, and have coffee and a nosh.
We head home, where I chop onion and carrots, take a fat frozen tile of burger from the freezer downstairs, and get the leftover red sauce from the refrigerator. I sauté the veggies in the big, deep fry pan, and put the meat in. I cover it and turn the heat to low.
It is 4:00, and I am hoping to have all the ingredients in, the chili simmering, when the call begins.
I walk the house, restless, folding soft throws onto backs of chairs and loveseat, picking up a napkin here, an empty glass there, returning to the kitchen to scrape and turn the meat. Then I prowl some more, restless, anticipating.
James puts his headphones on and sits at the dining room table, where he taps away at his computer.
The burger cooperates beautifully. I use the flat-edged wooden utensil my nephew Brian sent one year; I chop and turn until all pink disappears, and I pour in the red sauce. I add water; I add brown sugar; I add Worcestershire sauce and cayenne pepper.
I salt and pepper again, and I walk around, clicking on the call link to get things ready, straightening books, while the chili starts to simmer.
I stir in kidney beans, and I sit down, ready for the call to start.
*****************
It's an interesting online meeting, informative and promising; the only glitch is the refusal of my video to work. Oh, well; no one sees when, once in a while, I get up to check the bubbling brew.
At the end, when the facilitators call for any last questions, I have one. "Did we talk about age range?" I ask.
My colleagues assure me they got that information.
"Sorry," I say. "I must have been stirring the chili."
There is polite laughter, and Beth adds, "We're waiting for snow here; we're all getting ready."
I hadn't thought specifically about it, but Beth's right: when I know snow is coming, making a big pot of chili is one of my favorite responses.
********************
I'm not sure, though, this Thursday night, if I believe the winter advisory hype.
The weather app keeps shifting position. First it said there was a 100 per cent chance of snow between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. That kept pushing upward…between 3 and 5!
Between 4 and 6!
No snow comes, and the little snowflakes disappear from the app's daytime reckoning. After midnight, the app predicts, there is a 45-50% chance of snow for hours on end.
I'll believe it when I have to shovel it, I think.
**********************
I know that, in homes that house K-12 students—and in homes that house K-12 teachers—, people are doing snow dances. Please, please, prayers are shooting skyward; PLEASE let it snow enough to close the school.
Working parents, too, are watching the weather, many of them saying their own prayers—prayers they hope will cancel their children's out, override them.
***********************
Dinner is casual. Mark bustles home early, puffing, bringing a waft of cold air into the steamy kitchen. James has already eaten the leftover chicken wings from Take Out Tuesday; he meanders into the family room.
Mark changes into clothes that don't care if he's eating hot food with a red sauce, and the two of us scoop chili into thick white bowls. He sprinkles oyster crackers on his; I sprinkle some shredded cheddar left from last night's fajitas on mine. I pour corn chips, a required accompaniment to chili, into a little bowl.
We crunch and slurp, blow on steamy spoonsful of tangy stew, and catch up on the day's events.
Do you think there'll be snow? I ask.
Mark shrugs. Hard to say, he says, but he seems dubious, too.
************************
Someone—Susan, I think—shared a cute meme they saw that day during our staff discussion. It was an offer to give free snow shoveling lessons. Location, read the post, my driveway.
Bring your own shovel.
Will we get enough snow to even worry about shoveling? I wonder.
***************************
After dinner, I slide my lambie slippers on and step out onto the back stoop. I grew up in snow country, and there is a feel, and there is a smell, that presage snowfall.
The sky feels heavy when snow is coming. It feels that way this evening, the clouds thick and opaque, the air beneath pushing down.
And truly, there is a certain smell when snow is coming, and I smell it right now.
Anxious squirrels skitter and veer, cheeks bulging, acorns in their little front paws. The motion-activated light clicks on and off, on and off.
*****************************
James brings a video game system up from the basement, and gets comfortable in the family room. Mark lights the fire and we snuggle into our reading chairs, pulling throws up to our chins. Flames flicker; pages turn. Laundry chugs below us.
Evening settles into darkness.
Night offers mystery and wonder: what will the wee hours bring?
********************************
I unwrap my cozy blankie and get up to fold a batch of whites, fresh and crackling from the dryer: undies and t-shirts, socks, hankies, a big batch of soft white rags from Sarah's Tuesday cleaning. Something about the rags,—their weight, their heft, their warmth on my hands,—stirs up a memory of being very young and pulling on flannel pajamas on a cold winter night: jammies fresh from the dryer. I remember knowing the snow was coming then, too. I remember being wrapped in those pajamas and feeling toasty and safe.
When the towels come out of the dryer, I fold those, too and put them away, and then I take my interesting book upstairs and read in bed. Wind whooshes outside and twigs tap the front window, and I wonder what the night will bring.
*******************************
A Facebook meme tells me that Hamburg, New York, where dear friends live, got 62 inches of snow in the past four days. That much???
I text Wendy.
"Yep," she replies.
Our snow advisory is for three to five inches, which, to our western New York souls, seems inconsequential.
But snow here is different than snow there.
*********************************
I turn a page. The words blur, and I drift off to sleep.
*******************************
Mark wakes up with a start at about 5:20 a.m. He hops up, runs into the bathroom. I wait, in a kind of twilit daze, to see if he comes back for another half hour of sleep.
While I wait, I hear the furnace kick on. A snowplow chudders by, scraping the street outside.
Snuggled under the comforter, I grab my phone, check school closings. The children and teachers had their prayers answered; sorry, moms and dads. I pull up the weather app, and I hear the shower start. Then I hear James open his door and run downstairs.
Something about snowfall calls us up and out. There's some sort of transformation and glee involved.
**********************************
The weather app suggests we may have gotten 1.5 inches of snow. More is falling; I stand at the back door and watch. The snow is gentle and silvery, falling. On the ground, the lights, flicking on and off as manic little squirrels run by, make the snow glint, crystalline.
And there's that smell, that distinct snow-scent, which I can't even begin to distill.
*************************************
Mark layers his Friday outfit, business casual and toasty warm, packs up, bundles into his puffy coat, and heads out to work, muttering. James, breakfasted, grabs a thick blanket and crawls onto the couch. He is snoring within seconds.
No cars trundle down the street. The neighborhood is hushed and softened.
The snow still falls.
*************************************
I feel—hmm, what DO I feel?
I check the cookie jar: do I need to bake a batch of snickerdoodles? (I feel like cooking.)
I think that I should pull my boots on and clean off the front walk before the mail carrier arrives. (I feel like organizing this day.)
I wonder if we have any ice-melt left from last year. (I feel a need to keep those who tread our pathways safe.)
I recognize a kind of unexpected holiday glee.
Underneath all that, I realize, I feel relief—relief that the winter world still acts like the winter world should. It's January: of COURSE there will be snow.
***********************************
The day leans out before me, whitened, freshened, and transformed. I suck down the last dreg of decaf and head out to meet it.
************************************
And, just as a post-script, my cracked fingers are almost healed, and I have great hopes of staving off any more crackly outbreaks. This is all thanks to the kind offices of special people---you know who you are…
No comments:
Post a Comment