Snowbound

On Tuesday, there was a slight rush at the grocery store - gotta get milk! gotta get bread! - but because of social distancing for checkout, it looked a lot worse than it was. Me? I was mostly there for a poinsettia and an eggplant. 

Wednesday was definitely a snow-is-a-cumin-in sort of day. A wan winter sun in the morning, lowering clouds in the afternoon, and that wonderful (yes!) sense you get when the first storm of the season is approaching.

I didn't notice when things started, but by the time I woke up on Thursday morning, it was snowing aplenty - something of a shock to Bostonians who "enjoyed" virtually no snow last year. (And a bit scarily reminiscent of the whopper, week-after-week snow events of 2015, when we got ten feet of snow in a bit over a month.)

I was, of course, hunkered down to be hunkered down.

There was no need to go out, but go out I did, just to take a little peek at how lovely everything looks when it's snowing. 

I didn't have a Robert Frost experience. There are no woods nearby, let alone woods that "are lovely, dark, and deep." And, of course, I don't have any "promises to keep." But I did scoot over to the Boston Public Garden, where there are plenty of trees and where all the fountains and monuments were charmingly snow-capped. 

I didn't stay out all that long. After all, there was a Nor'easter on. Plus I (un)fortunately had an exceedingly boring work project to complete, foolishly promised by c.o.b. on Friday. 

Once I managed to race my way through the project, I did my favorite first snow day thing. I made myself a cup of tea (Barry's) and reread James Joyce's The Dead. This does, of course, sound incredibly artsy-fartsy pretentious, but it's such a brilliant story, and there's snow in it, and it's one of the few things I ever reread, and I had my cuppa Barry's, so...

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

And then I did a bit of baking, which puts me in my kitchen, which has a greenhouse window and a wonderful lookout over the snow coming down. 

Yes, the newspapers, and TV, and the weather app on my phone were right: snow was general all over Massachusetts. And a lot of it.

It was falling softly upon the Public Garden and, further westwards, softly falling all over Worcester, which, whenever there's a storm, always seems to get the brunt of it. And not always softly.

I wasn't there to see it, but I'm pretty sure it was falling, too, upon every part of Mt. Auburn Cemetery, where a good part of my husband's ashes lay buried. I suspect that it's laying thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the big gates...And on the ash plot on Azalea Way.

My soul did not swoon slowly as I heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

But I did feel something looking out on all that snow. And that was wishing that it would remain light, fluffy and pristine. That the sidewalks would all be shoveled and no snow left to harden into treacherous icepacks that can turn into broken hips for elderly widow ladies who venture too far out. That Christmas will be white, and not covered with a gritty scrim of exhaust fumes. That today's winter wonderland will not be transformed into nodes of hardened, blackish-gray mounds, riddled with yellow dog piss marks.

For today, however, it's lovely out there.

Nice to be snowbound every once in a while.