A Big Snow Storm That Let Us Get Small

Washingtonians will remember the Blizzard of 2016. It was a blizzard for the ages, as trumpeted the Washington Post whose Sunday paper came on Monday but come it did and whose weekend magazine came on Friday, and come it did—came but did not let go. 

Officially, for Washingtonians and others in the area, it ended on Jan. 23 just before midnight. The snow stopped, and we woke up the next day to sunshine and a pile of snow so high. Hardly anyone went out, and we became  stale air breathers for a time.

The storm was awesome in its fury, its tonnage and created tundras and caused us to start worrying in a serious way.  Weather folks and measurers and which doctors exulted—they had been for once right, and couldn’t wipe the smile off their faces.   This was their time—they even dressed for it. Pat Collins came out with his stick and schtick. It seemed, in spite of everything, that all was all right with the world, as best as it could be.

The storm wiped out—if not the sun—other news for the most part.  Lots of people ventured out, even though Mayor Muriel Bowser sternly told them not to.  They went to the nearest pub, whatever remained open, a restaurant, a street corner, just to see, to get bee-stung by wind-swept snow, to look at the sights, holding hands or to roll in the snow.

This past weekend was a time when the most viral sight was of a middle aged black and white bear sucking his toes as he rolled in the snow with all the delight of a cub. 

Another sure sign that while there was tragedy tonight, while cars got stuck, and people crashed into each other, and some died in a multistage catastrophe—41 feet there, 22 right in our back yards, 29 in Baltimore—there was heart-felt feeling of having once again survived.  Not everyone  or everything did—roofs collapsed, lights went out, the homeless suffered casualties as they always do, we all went to sleep not quite sure on Saturday night what we might wake up to.  

We get warped views of these things—narrow-eyed, only outside the steps, the chatter on the streaming computer, the sirens, the snow, the snow.  And so we become our own best friends, shut-ins.  We listen and watch for the round of reporters out in Virginia and Maryland, standing guard with reports at gas stations, neighborhood stores, impassable and impossible intersections, shivering, some, their long hair in tatters, others looking sharp and fashionable, trudging the roads against the odds.

We salute you guys: wouldn’t want to be you.

My son called from Anaheim, sunny Los Angeles for once, on a job setting up convention media, for a convention of rock-and-roll music instrument buyers and sellers, I think, I’m not sure. It sounded cool, you go, son.  He asked if we were okay, thinking about us and all that. We said it hasn’t stopped snowing and that it’s going to get worse. The tone of his voice was frowning—you don’t need Skype for that.

The television never went off—what a wonder, and through it, through our over-provisioning, we made piles of noodles and meatballs and a hot breakfast. The panda appeared on the screen regularly, as did the stuck truckers.  Outside on Sunday on Lanier Place, tourists—we believe—had somehow ventured onto our street and gotten stuck.  Dogs were being walked, and the little statue of Mother Mary at Joseph’s House  had been wrapped in double layers of scarves, red against the white snow.

On television, we  sectioned out on reruns: “Blue Bloods,” “SVU,” “NCIS,” “Friends” and comfort food.  

In times like these, the world almost disappears: I did not hear the word “Syria” or “Obamacare.” We become smaller.

First, the newspapers disappear for two days, an odd thing not to look for the paper in the pile of snow. The world out there disappears with it.  Oh, we can follow the doings of the British Parliament if we want, but who wants to.  The Kardashians seem to have gone off the grid, also, unless you are looking.  The Middle East is too warm, sunshine on their weapon-carrying shoulders. Putin has nothing to say.

The only people who have something to say are the politicians, the office-runners, still with us, Donald Trump with his daily output of outrageous stuff—”I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t lose votes,” dissing Barbara Bush, trying to rekindle a feud with Megyn Kelly, and, of course, battling with the prince of darkness Ted Cruz.   Cruz, these days, looks a little mangled, which is the look of that old song “I fought with Trump and I think he’s winning, where the hell are my boots.”

It’s hard to let go of them and their importuning ways—the first votes to be cast will be cast just about any February day now and the procrastinators and protesters, and anti-procreators and predictors,  and rotor rooters are spinning their wheels.  What if, and if this happens, and those people go to a caucus  and another one sits on a caucus and can’t vote, why we could be looking at President Trump.  This is what the Sunday morning shows do to you.  You can’t look away, it’s the opposite of viral, some blue addiction.   Bernie and Hillary and Marco and the Donald and all those experts and reporters  following them all like rabbits.

It’s enough to make you watch old movies.   We watched “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and were surprised to remember what a fine old western and movie movie it is, a kind of homage by Clint Eastwood to John Ford, bloody, to be sure, but a kind of tall tale, too, like “True Grit” and “Little Big Man” with the steadying commentary of Chief Dan George. It seemed like every grizzled old face that had ever graced—grizzly and all—a western.  

In this atmosphere, in these times of white fallout and inundation, people running for office seem like intrusions, flies around a bone, buzzing needlessly and uselessly. 

Let the music play, help your neighbor, say hello to your neighbor, sing a song of sixpence, that’s what’s important.  In the silent night, should you wake up in the dark, remember a friend or a song, and say goodbye again. Watch the children and small dogs in the snow. Kiss your wife and the window.

Make an angel in the snow.   Watch your breath in the cold. Pray for the people along the flooding, churning Atlantic.

Drown out for a few days the noise of the chattering classes trying to drown out the sound of your breathing—those who claim they know you and what you want.