This past weekend, the forecast was for a huge winter storm.
I have never been a fan of winter. Everything’s dead and my nose runs constantly. One thing I liked about the season was sometimes snow and ice made it so things got cancelled.
As an an alarmist, I also enjoyed the pre-storm panic-buying of milk, bread, and firewood. I could think of nothing better than me, a hardy New Englander, hunkered down for days, surviving on hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows.
The build-up to this last storm just made me feel anxious. Sam, Charlie, and I had to drive seventy miles north, where the snowfall was supposed to be even more significant, to meet the Home Depot appliance delivery guys at our new house. While we were there, the sky turned darker and you could smell snow in the air. We worked quickly, like we were being pursued, which in a way, we were. My final task was to walk Charlie before getting back in the car, so I took him into the cemetery across the street.
Re. the house, the cemetery was a huge selling point for me. I love reading headstones and imagining how people died, and if that sounds morbid, guilty as charged. The air was still, the way that it is before a snowstorm. Squirrels were acting like idiots. Even though the prospect of paralyzing snow no longer thrilled me, I could still thrill to a good cemetery walk. This worried me. How old was I, that death felt like a fun distraction?
Then my daughter-in-law sent pictures of my granddaughter Gemma seeing her first snow in Brooklyn. Gemma wore a brown chunky fleece hat with earflaps and was trying to make sense of what was falling from the sky. Her eyes widened, and she kicked her legs. Gemma is impossibly adorable, but did I sense a teeny weeny bit of meh in her reaction?
I was probably reading what I wanted to read in her expression- what they call projection in psychology - but I was hopeful. My thoughts turned from the cold cemetery to the summer not too far away, and warmth, and a beach somewhere, and how cute Gemma looks in a bucket hat.