Columns

Gimme Shelter: Mid-January journal

| Snowed in. Ice crystals forming on a Silver Beach window.
AMBROSE CLANCY PHOTO | Let it snow.

I started to hear it a week ago today, a suddenly cheery tone when speaking about a potential catastrophe.

At the Eagle Deli a guy asked his buddy, with a smile, “Ready for some snow?”

“Don’t say that word,” his friend answered, beaming back.

At the post office: “I hear it’s going to be up to a foot,” a woman said, working with both hands to pull mail wedged into a solid mass from her box.

“My brother’s in Florida,” her friend said, sifting through some letters. She looked up happily. “I hate him.”

What is this spark of joy when ominous forces are looming? Thoreau’s insight that “most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them” may be turned around when something different interrupts our daily slog. Instead of a dirge, a jaunty march begins to play on our inner soundtrack.

Quiet desperation? Come on, we’ve got a foot — a foot! — of snow on the way, we might lose power, the wind will wail all night, let’s get some noisy desperation going.

I’m happy when I find people who actually look forward to blizzards. Stocking up on kindling at the IGA, I ran into our Reporter neighbor, Kimberlea. She was talking to Muhammad, who was ringing up her purchases, telling him she “loved blizzards, don’t you?”

Muhammad, originally from Pakistan, wasn’t so sure. Last winter he was in Queens and the never-ending string of storms wasn’t all that much fun, he said.

“But it’s different out here, completely different,” Kimberlea said, noting that the Highway Department always does a great job clearing the roads. “And,” she added, “it’s beautiful.”

Muhammad said he was looking forward to it. Sort of.

The following day, Friday, pickup trucks with snowplows were roaming Island roads like athletes warming up on the field before the big game. The morning was bright and clear. By early afternoon the sky had softened, taking on the quality of a pearl.

Was there also a softening of mood, now that the forecast was only in the 8- to-10-inch range?

Daybreak Saturday, treetops were thrashing in the wind and needles of snow were flashing past horizontally.

The night before, with no sense of irony, Mary made summer pudding, a dense concoction of bread, juice, blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. Placed in a bowl, covered with a plate and a large can of tomatoes on top to press it down, in the morning it was glistening, perfect. We ate it with cream all weekend.

There were shadows shifting within the trees at the edge of our back yard — deer in their dark, winter coats. Five deer reached long slender necks up to the white-coated leaves of the rhododendron trees, standing on their back legs to feed, perfectly balanced.

In the early afternoon the music suddenly went silent. My first thought was it was our CD player, which has slowly been losing its mind, shutting off of its own accord — as if it doesn’t approve of the selection — or opening and closing the disc player by itself on a whim.

But the many digital clocks in our kitchen were dark. We were ready with batteries, candles and wood stacked inside for the fireplace.

Mary said one of the benefits of a blizzard is “storm as a project. It’s like traveling,” in that you have no problem identifying your purpose in life — getting from one place to another. All other problems of life vanish.

After refueling with summer pudding, I went out to the woodpile for more logs and to receive one of the gifts of snow — the transformation of things expansive as a landscape or small as watering can, made new. The crotches of double-trunked trees seemed to be wearing white bikini bottoms. My sister Peggy’s stone Buddha, who sits at the back of our terrace, was sporting a perfectly white and wet chef’s hat.

We didn’t watch too much TV. Wolf Blitzer was making out that it had never snowed before. I waited for him to voice a conspiracy theory that God didn’t love us anymore.

We checked in on News 12 a few times. I was hoping to see again a Suffolk County employee who last year was ambushed by a reporter sticking a microphone in his face as he got down from his snowplow, demanding to know the condition of the roads.

Startled, he paused, and then said, “It’s tredjadous out here.”

A perfect, storm-minted word.

According to Katelyn Stokes, writing on the Amp Agency blog — a market research shop out of New York and Boston — “snowstorms are the new Super Bowl … due to the reach, the engaged audience, the media frenzy surrounding the event and the multiscreen engagement.” And like the Super Bowl, snowstorms “are a three-part event — before, during and after — with differing emotions and needs tied to each phase of the experience … Snow does not just mean constant checking of the weather forecast, it means shopping urgency.”

It’s tredjadous.

Sunday morning we walked down the road after digging Mary’s car out. The sky was deep, an endless blue only seen on vivid winter days. Our voices were amplified in the stillness.

Monday I bought some milk at the IGA — I know, a little late — and Muhammad rang up the sale. I asked him how his first Island snowstorm had gone.

“I stayed inside,” he said with a smile. “It was beautiful.”