The accumulated snow on my porch roof has all but obliterated our view of the street below. There is little room left in our driveway for the disposal of the snow that has drifted down in and over our cars. Why don’t I put the cars in the garage? A garage, one that you enter from the house … well, that is something that can only exist in fantasies that include Cary Grant, Robert Redford and the loss of 40 pounds. Each winter morning is a festival of snow removal and mutterings that include some rather creative use of the language. My spouse, and I don’t know what he is trying to prove, refuses to use the snow blower on the driveway apron, preferring to shovel the stuff while I keep my hand near the phone and 911. I can hear him now, declaring that the snow blower can’t handle the “heavy stuff”…and he can?
I am remembering our first year in the house. There we were, naively beginning to attack what was a very long list of problems-extraordinaire on the inside. We never gave a thought to the outside and what happens when winter comes, the roofs are covered with snow and some of it melts. Fade fast to a relatively young and very inexperienced homeowner on the roof of the back porch, with an axe (not a hatchet …an axe … a big one,) chopping the glacial ice that was melting into the house, frighteningly adding to the list of “must do’s” without any idea of what to do. How cold was it? It was so cold that year that the blood from a cut that I deftly procured from said ice actually froze. I didn’t even know that I’d cut my hand until it defrosted.
I shake my head at my innocence and sigh because we still have the same problem … even with an assortment of solutions that have included wiring the roof edges. The latter worked for one year. Then the squirrels found the insulation around the wires too tempting for their educated palates and the wiring stopped working. We have a roof rake. We’ve bought stuff that you throw on the roof that is supposed to open pathways for melting snow and ice, encouraging the results to drip harmlessly to the ground instead of inside of the house. The results of all of this are cautionary examples of futility.
Before I go on, I have to check and see if the family room door has defrosted. Yesterday I discovered that ice had locked the door into its frame … Where is that axe?
But there are other memories that show winter in another frame. I can so easily recall teaching my then-toddler first born how to build not only a snowman, but also a snow fort, hauling forth my best memories of one winter in Brooklyn when we had enough snow to build a similar fort between the cars on 55th Street. On First Street we built our fortifications around a bush that grew in the corner of our front yard. We made snow blocks, stacked them and then parged it all with a layer of snow. It was a fine fort that entertained us for days.
When the same little boy was four, his Dad took him to Toggenberg to learn how to ski. A four-year-old on skis – he’s never looked back! His sister naturally joined in when she arrived at the right age. They both are experts on the slopes now. Their father, the shoveling spouse about which I’ve written, went skiing on Wednesday mornings until very recently. And the grandchildren are fearless on the slopes. You did notice that there is no mention of me on skis and there never will be.
I used to ice skate. I loved to skate and still have my figure skates hanging in the basement, but time and arthritis have sent that ship sailing into the big sea of exaggerated memory along with the ability to get down low enough to build snow forts with my grandsons.
For some of us winter is an outdoor paradise, and for others, now only observers, winter provides other choices, mostly indoor involving cozy fireplaces and warm liquids. When the snow continues to fall along with the temperatures there are inside activities for those of us for whom the outside is something but to be endured. Among those inside possibilities are the corner of the living room loveseat, a good book and a cup of tea. The spouse has discovered pickle ball. No freezing fingers and toes, no possibility of being hauled to the ER for a snow related injury, no swearing at my driveway or weeping at the ice build-up on the eaves. Isn’t that equal to a day on the slopes
