Hazy shade of winter snow day

A missive from the fourth week of the regime

Snow is starting to come down in hard, mean flakes right now. It’s not falling. It’s being blown sideways by a cruel, biting wind. All the schools here are closed, even though right now the roads are clear. It’s mid-morning, so officials made the call long before we could really know what the weather was going to do. Which way—or even if—the winds were really going to blow.

It’s always such a hard call for them to make. Call off school in advance, and the storm might not come. Then, everyone is mad at the disruption that didn’t need to happen. Keep school open, and you might end up with a huge mess that could have been avoided: Kids sent home early, but stuck on busses that can’t get through the snow. Parents who can’t get home to meet them. Accidents. Pain and confusion. Then, everyone is mad at the lack of foresight. Everyone is mad because someone didn’t do something to prevent something that seems so obviously inevitable in hindsight.

Because there is a teacher in my household, we’ve been wishing for a snow day. This is probably not going to be the day we’ve been wishing for. We’ve been wishing for the snow days of nostalgia, the kind we remember or think we remember from years past. Drifts of snow, the kind you sled on or make snowmen from. Red cheeks, white-crusted hats, cups of cocoa and afternoon movies and puzzles and naps. How many people wish for the return of something that never really existed? At best, we are remembering small moments, highlights from days gone by that also included squabbling children, worry, boredom, stress from upended plans. One year, on the fifth in a string of snow days with small children, I woke to a cold house. The power was on, but I couldn’t get our propane stove to turn on. I looked out the window and saw our chimney in pieces on the ground, pushed off the house by the weight of all the beautiful, pristine snow that was starting to melt and slide from the roof. I was too beat down from the previous days to cry or crumple into a heap—and besides, I had kids to feed and keep warm and reassure. I remember sighing, deeply.

Today is probably going to be more of an ice day than a snow day. In truth, where I live now, most snow days are actually ice days. At least, it’s been that way for about 10 years. It’s just taken some of us awhile to catch up, to see that there’s a new weather pattern. We are going to hope the power lines hold. We’re not really prepared for an extended outage. We don’t have a backup source of heat or a good supply of food that can be eaten without cooking. It’s been a tough week, and even though we knew this weather might come, it was taking all I had to just get through each day as it came. The forecasters have teased us several times already this winter with snowflakes on the weather app that never materialized on the ground. So, it was easy to think that it wasn’t going to really happen this time.

We were wrong about that. And now, there are some small things we can do but also there’s not all that much we can do, other than cross our fingers and hope for the best. Be glad for our shelter and that, right now, the heat is still on. Send out signals to our people, let them know we’re here, we’re OK, everything is fine.

Be ready to pivot, adapt, make a new plan.

I’ve been collecting resources of things we can/might do. Here are a few:

Tuesday Tools: Join the resistance

How to survive a healthcare apocalypse: Top 10 tips from two critical care physicians.

Saving Democracy: A Crowdsourced Plan for Effective Action

Please let us know how you’re doing, or share any resources that you think are worth sharing. Hope you’re all keeping warm.

(PS: In the time it took me to write this, the street covered with snow. Officials made the right call this time. I’m grateful for that.)

If this writing speaks to you in some way, please give it a heart ❤️ or a share. It would warm mine on this bitterly cold day. 🙂