It seems surreal. This is the time of year when we should be tucking the new spring annuals into the garden edges and planting sugar snap peas for the children to pick as soon as we begin to smell the sweet smell of the summer wind. But, alas, today we are digging out from the fourth No'easter this month! Normally being located on the Atlantic Ocean, albeit sheltered a bit by the juxtaposition of three islands and a confluence of the ocean, a river and a sound which is near to the Gulf Stream, allows us to "dodge the bullet" that most heavy snow storms present, and we usually get less snow and more rain. That did not happen yesterday!
I woke at 6am Wednesday to a gentle misty shower. "No snow!", I thought; I was so wrong! Not an hour later at 7:00am the first flakes started and soon the snow was pelting and swirling and being knocked around by the wind that blows off the harbor onto my roof deck. The patio tables I had so carefully covered in the fall quickly began to accumulate layer upon layer of freshly fallen snow. The patio chairs that I have covered and bungee-corded were now on their sides sliding across the slippery snow-slicked deck stopping only when they hit the roof wall or the planter that was itself wrapped in burlap to protect the hydrangea plant. ( Dear Lord, keep my beloved hydrangea safe from the destruction of the storm!)
My decoy plastic owl, my hard-working Ollie, sat stoically on the ledge overlooking Bay Street as more and more snow accumulated on his head! An occasional sea gull would fly by giving him a rather wide berth. No starlings, sparrows or the obiqueous pigeons made appearances that day! Not one was in sight. They had hunkered down somewhere out of the cold and windy falling flakes. And I did the same.
This turned out to be the perfect day to get all those things done which I have left undone. Correspondence via snail mail and email to friends, kith and kin...and other matters that needed to get done like a month ago. And then, there was silence!
And silence is not a bad thing. It gives us time to slow down and relax in ourselves. It was time to turn off the T.V. and spend time with myself doing stuff I have not done in a while, but enjoy. So, I knitted; I read and I meditated. I actually took some time and watched the snow fall from three different locations in my apartment: from the deck doors from which I normally see ships coming in and out of the harbor, I could only see faint red lights coming from the taillights of the brave drivers of cars and trucks as they slowly crossed into Brooklyn for reasons unknown to me. From my bedroom window that usually provides me with an expansive view of Breezy Point, Coney Island, Bay Ridge, and Red Hook, all I could see was globs of snowflakes hitting against my windows. And from the sliding doors to my living room balcony, all I could see was the outline of trains as they plowed passed my building either into or out of the ferry terminal.
The only noises I could hear were an occasional fog horn and the whistle of the trains as they chugged and stopped at the local station. I could not even see if anyone was walking to or from the stairs to the station itself. Everything halted, as if everything was frozen in time and space. And so it was...for a day.
And now, a new day is here. Things are slowly getting back to "normal". The kids are back at school; driveways are shoveled; streets are plowed; the sea of snow is gradually receding and I am hearing a slow and steady drip-drip-drip of melting all around me. Tomorrow this snow will be but a memory for all of us, but the gift of enforced slow-down; a snow day, a slow day is something that we can all look back on and, hopefully, smile...at least a bit.
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