Snow day
Snow days can be hard. Today has been. But…
Last year, when there was a storm like this, I was on a little weekend mini-tour with Tim Williams (it was just myself, him, and Matt Welsh of Phonograph playing as a trio). We played in Philly and Washington D.C., and we were staying with his parents in Annapolis, Maryland. Fortunately, we got the shows done before the weather rendered us immobile, but I was under pressure to get back to New York for a rehearsal with the lovely Allison Pierce, who was debuting her solo project. It made her and I uneasy that I could not make the last rehearsal the day before the show, but, like the French say, “Qu’est-ce q’on dit, quoi?”. We were stuck. I had to let it go. So. We made the best of it.
Tim’s parents live right near the water in Annapolis…donc, we schlepped out the sleds and decked out in the finest winter gear, which good east-coast parents always seem to have barrels of, and had Tim’s mom drive us to where the road ended, and the long, winding, unpaved stretch of what might have been a driveway lead straight to the water’s edge. Matt, being most uninhibited of the bunch, went for it first. As I watched him speed down the hill, quite masterfully maneuvering the sophisticated sled, I caught a glimpse of him as a child and it at once made me laugh and well up with emotion. Maybe I saw something lost. Or maybe I saw that what one thinks is lost is never too far from revival, weather permitting. Anyhow…I went next. Cautiously. Always. And then Tim. Maybe the one with the most sledding experience, but somehow even more cautious than I. He’s been through a lot. We’ll allow it. A few tumbles and a few snow-ball fights, and many laughing fits later, we made it down to the water. It was amazing. Grey. White. Silence. Water. Snow. Falling. Drifting. Lingering. Sobering. Awe-inspiring. We went from being kids, to being students of nature’s rendering-reverential power. We didn’t speak for a very long time as we passed an semi-immersed playground and walked along a dock that stretched out into the water. We stood for so long there. Just watching. Listening. To silence. Soon the children in us came back and we started breaking huge chunks of ice off the dock and hurling them into the water. Competing for who could throw the biggest piece the furthest. Matt won.
The hike back up the hill was…oof…in so many clothes…in thickening snow…and laughing so hard I could barely keep from falling. Matt makes me laugh. Tim makes me laugh. The absurdity and exhilaration of this whole experience was hilarious to me. I had never been this happy as a child. I felt incredibly lucky to be feeling it, at all.
We survived the trek back to Tim’s house and rewarded the accomplishment with hot cocoa. Classic. After which I stole off with Tim’s ukelele to a windowed-nook in the room where I was sleeping and wrote “Snowed In”. The little ditty actually made it onto my new recording coming out March 30. (PLUG!)
I loved that I was allowed to have that day. To have it in real time, and as a memory. I loved that I was able to allow myself to take it all in…from the cold of the snow, to the sound of silence, to the burning in my legs from climbing, and the ache in my stomach from laughing, and the taste of cocoa, and the bubbling childish joy, and the people I was so happy to be sharing it with. It was church. A sabbath. It was holy
This year, I’m alone on my snow day. Locked in my apartment. Snow storms are very different in the city than out there where the real world happens. Snow turns to slush fast under the car wheels and feet and heat from the subway grates. It’s difficult to walk and it’s ugly and inconvenient. So, I’m glad I have a better memory of east-coast snow to write home to New Mexico about than this silly mess that’s happening outside. But I’m also glad the dirty city snow bestowed a plot of time for me to sit down and write about a better day than today.