The first thing that you realize as consciousness overtakes your dream state is an odd quality to the light that hits your closed eyelids. It isn't that squinty red feeling you get when toasting yourself on a beach, but a soothing whiteness. Your alarm clock hasn't gone off yet, so you feel obligated to just lie there, trying to interpret the feeling. You realize that there is no sound in your world. You don't hear the cars and doors and dogs and birds and all the other white noises that tend to occupy space and time.
The sounds you never notice until they leave a void. You feel particularly comfortable, not as if you would dread getting up, but you don't have the same desire to stay abed as you do when you are rudely awakened by the alarm mere hours after retiring. In other words, you feel peaceful, and well rested. Then knowledge of what is happening reaches you, in the deeply echoing sound of metal hitting pavement on an oblique angle as it scrapes a path in the...snow!
A snow day!!
Only snow can, of all weather, elicit such emotions in people. Those who complain are probably grinches, and despite their grumbling, probably lie in bed like you and I thinking of the snowmen or great snowball fights of their youth. Snow is inherently different from other forms of weather. The sun goes away, every day, no matter how sunny. Rain, once it stops, exists nowhere but in puddles. The wind, unless gentle, is feared and people prepare to fight mightily to protect their lives and belongings when they hear it will be visiting. Snow is physical in a way that no other weather can be. Snow is sculptural, and it is sculpted. Snow can be picked up and moved. It can be molded into different shapes, and it can be thrown. Snow wants to be touched. Sometimes it is soft, and fluffy, and tickles cheeks and eyelashes. Sometimes it can be dense and so strong that it can be walked on. It can balance on objects less than an inch wide. It is quiet, too. Snow comes silently. Oh, people fear snow. But mostly at the inconveniences it causes. If it rains you leave a few minutes early to take a route that doesn't flood. Snow wants you to really think about it. Will I be able to get to the store for milk? It is the kind of weather that brings back those hunting and gathering, hibernating instincts.
Survival.
How long will it take to move snow from the car, the driveway? And will you be plowed back in? Can you admit to never picking up some of the snow from the car and forming a snowball, even if there is no one to throw it at? It is an exercise in sentiment, because as you move it from one place to another, more convenient spot, you certainly recall a snow day from your childhood. Of the percolating excitement as you dressed to go out to make “snow angels“, to fling yourself into a flat unmarked area of pure white where no foot had yet stepped. The purity of the white, the unerring evenness of the coating, the amazement as you stepped off the porch up to your knees and sank slowly into its softness. Of not having school and having grandma ready with the hot cocoa when you finally came inside, looking very much like the snowman you just finished building. Snow chunks hanging from every fiber of your scarf and hood and mittens, and the sound of swishing snowpants and frozen toes and shiny red cheeks and noses. Of being sent to a radiator to remove layer after layer, a warm dry sweater waiting to take its place. As a child of the most amazing aspects to snow was its staying power. Snow, if piled correctly, densely enough, high enough, if it rained or melted a bit and then froze again, could provide a mountain to climb until Easter! Even as daffodils and tulips came from the soft spring ground, there would be a game of king of the mountain going on (right where third base would be in spring)
Snow alone causes a kind of community that generally doesn't exist. People tend to get to know neighbors on snow days. They trade shovels, or dig out one car at a time. People who would barely nod acquaintance at any other time become, if only for the moment, pals. They chat and joke, complain and shrug. We are all in it together. The street where I grew up was private, one that was not plowed by the city. The whole street was shoveled by the residents, one shovelful at a time. Everyone went out to help. One person had a truck and he went up to each house and took grocery orders (we always needed cat food!) and he ventured off our block. If we knew snow was coming, most of the cars were parked on the next street so people could get to work.
What other weather causes people to behave in quite the same way? It is the only weather that stays. It may rain on Tuesday, be sunny on Wednesday. But if it snows on Thursday, you start thinking about sledding trips on Saturday! Truly there is magic in snow! (and to think that each flake is an individual) We usually dream of a White Christmas, but don't get our snow until far later in the season, when it doesn't help the ambiance of the holiday, yet, still deep down, we all long for a snow day. On a snow day things don't have to get accomplished.
You can maroon yourself in your home.
Lie on the couch with tea and a novel or popcorn and a video.
Write a letter, or look through boxes of old photos.
Forget so many of your responsibilities. Put them off until tomorrow.
Reassess priorities. Realize what's really important.
Put on gloves and scarves and boots and lip balm and go play in the snow with your dogs, your children or your memories.
Trish Casey, 12/1995 copyrighted.1996 contact for further publication information
foghorn
The blast of the foghorn momentarily distracts me from my reverie. The damp, foggy air only sharpens the smell of "OLD". It is pervasive, touching everything. It has wrapped itself into the folds of cloth, into the cracks and crevices of boxes and books; it is folded inside letters. Its perfume lingers in old trunks and hangs low from the rafters.
Gingerly, I open a letter. The date-- 1823. Quickly scanning it for a familiar name, I refold it and place it on the ever-growling pile on the floor. Its destiny-- not neglect or mildew any longer, but a curious strangers' careful transcription.
A stack of memories builds by my side. Letters forgotten before my grandfathers were born are entrusted to my care. I'm guardian to their memories. They have traveled physically only within the confines of an Island' but over one hundred years later they have journeyed to an attic where they sit waiting for me. Generations separate them from their intended audience.
I read through missives written by people whose names have but the slightest meaning to me. Letters that were written at a time of candlelight and feather pens. They are very formal, with proper and labored wording, even to those with whom they were intimate.
It occurred to me anew as I peered uninvited into these peoples lives and their private thoughts, that this "collecting" spirit is seemingly an inherited trait.
There is a photo of Aunt Genes' back door hanging on my wall. The door was planed to fit the frame, the paint is peeling, and the door knob is of purple glass. But according to my grandfather, the photo is missing a crucial element-- the strings hung with once and twice used tea bags, suspended there to dry.
Last year, Aunt Gene and Uncle Everett had to move to Florida. Cleaning out their home was a distressing experience for them. These two people had spent their lives reusing, recycling and collecting. The ultimate irony became, for them, a painful reality.
Mom got the glass jar full of old broken crayons. Those crayons and the coloring books that went with them were old when I was a child. Just a few years ago, my own daughter colored those same pages. Tow five-pound mayo jars full of glorious old buttons were donated to a preschool.
After some cajoling on my part, Aunt Gene gave me a few mismatched antimacassars, and a lace table cloth, crocheted by my great- great grandmother, my great grandmother Miriam or by Aunt Gene her self. Boxes of negatives were rescued from the rubbish pile.
The sum total of nearly 100 years (for her parents lived there before her) was slowly and precisely laid out on the front porch, the front yard, the curbside, and what wasn't picked over, finally went to Fresh Kills.
It no longer seems odd that my little one has an affinity for paper; for "books" filled with all manner of scribble, crayon drawings, stacked in piles, balance precariously on the tops of toys in her "area". Her "figures" collection pours over the edge of the large Easter basket put into use to house these treasures. They are each precious to her. None may be discarded.
I can't walk by a stationary store with out looking. The desire to own these papers is strong. To fold and tuck into an envelope my thoughts and secrets, sealing them inside.
I know now why boxes fascinate me. Small, large, containers of all sorts I collect to hold-- what?
I have an extra-deep bookcase so that I can perch various momentos and memories in front of the smaller books (mostly volumes rescued from the ravages of various basements)
So many parts and pieces, each with a story. My home is a living overstuffed monument to those who came before me. I am a product of my upbringing.
The Tiffany candy dishes that now grace my tables, were wrapped and carefully tucked away in my grandmothers closet. Every year I discovered them as I searched for evidence of Santa's early visit.
This inherited trait is the reason that this treasure trove exists. No one could bear to throw things out. It is reassuring to understand why I frantically search through reams of paper for a letter I know exists.
It is just because of a long line of collectors before me. I can't complain, but only be thankful because I know there were other people in my family who were the same way.
And I feel secure in the knowledge that someone will find that paper I'm looking for-- Someday!
All Photographs, unless otherwise noted are copyrighted images belonging to Trish Casey Green. All writing, unless otherwise noted, is the original copyrighted work of Timmy Green or Trish Casey Green. Please Respect all copyrights!
