I learned to swim in Long Island Sound by New London, CT, probably when I was four or so. I like swimming in pools and the ocean. Don’t especially like lakes and their usually slimy bottoms. Concrete and sand are OK on the feet, for some reason.

I started snorkeling as an adult and love it. Most memorable snorkeling trips were in Tahiti and Fiji, where we saw three HUGE giant clams on one small reef, all with different colored lips waving in the current.

Very bad experience while on a sailing charter to the British Virgin Islands, where my wife’s best friend since their teens drowned while snorkeling on Anegada. It was a primitive beach, so my wife performed CPR for over 45 minutes until an NP arrived and pronounced our friend dead. Extremely traumatic event, as you may imagine. One thing that came from that was we always snorkel with inflatable snorkel vests now, which would have saved our friend.

To keep up with my wife, I got certified in scuba diving about 15 years ago, and have had some nice experiences. Most interesting was coming upon eight big lemon sharks at Bora Bora.

Reader Advisory.  Iron Butterfly’s“In-A-Gada-Da-Vida,” and Simon and Garfunkel are referenced in this piece. If an earworm ensues, counteract it by singing “Bingo” (you know, “there was a boy who had a little dog and Bingo was his name-o…”)

Snow days

During grade school snow days, Chicky Ross, Danny Corsi, Tommy DiPetro and I used to sled until we were frozen stiff.  We didn’t know our clothes were soaked and frozen until we got next to the coal furnace in the basement, started steaming, our pants came off as a slab of ice and our legs were maraschino red.  We flashed down Beech Street’s steep quarter mile hill.  For an easy stop, we’d make a  sharp left at the bottom slow gliding to a stop on Maple Street, or make a sharp right onto Elm for one last lazy dip.  OR, for the sledding Samurai, we’d fly straight off the bottom of Beech ten feet into the air, then Slam! onto Ray Lakavich’s yard and plunge to a brush bordered creek. The Lakavich option’s mystique was enhanced by the likelihood of pursuit by irate Ray who didn’t want “goddamn kids diggin’ up” his “fucking yard.” Today’s salacious film scripts are drafted on the lawns of America.

High school snow days were spent lounging around the electric heater in Bill Menda’s attic reading Agatha Christie and listening to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (baby) or Eric Burden and the Animals wail “We gotta get out of this place.” (NYT, Jan 29, 2024, “Today’s Teenagers: Anxious About Their Futures and Disillusioned by Politicians”. Really.) Or, if I was yearning from a surfeit of Simon and Garfunkel, I took long walks through snowy woods with my dog, Ginger, dreaming (me, not Ginger) of Henry Mancini’s second cousin (see my reply to Jim’s comment on my DMV post) and planning to be the next JD Salinger.

Okay I’m gonna pull up, now, before I (as a friend warns) “drive into a ditch on Memory Lane,” because, the real point of this essay is now, as a retired Boomer, to my delight, every day is a snow day.

These days, when people ask me what I have scheduled, I reply, “nothing,” that magic word, which makes time not only relative, but optional.

Look, daffodils blooming.  A perfect snow day.

I was never a great swimmer, but I had the rudiments.
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Ah, the New England Blizzard of 1978. A storm so legendary it should have its own theme song, sung by a baritone with a healthy dose of post-traumatic stress. You know, something like “The Snow Drifts Were High, the Power Was Out, and My Shovel Became My Best Friend (And It Judged Me Silently).”

In Arlington, MA where I lived we were not spared the whiteout wrath. Picture this: me, a wide-eyed 20-something, armed with a plastic shovel that looked like it belonged on a children’s sandbox (because, well, it did). I dug, I huffed, I puffed, and managed to unearth my trusty Buick, christened “Rusty” for reasons unrelated to that current situation.

Victory! Except… not quite. Stepping out of my car turned snow-fort, I realized the world outside was a marshmallowy wasteland. Drifts towered like Arctic mountains, mocking my optimism. Any attempt to drive would have resulted in Rusty becoming a permanent snow sculpture with me as its shivering, frostbitten driver.

So, here I was, inside of my snowy Buick castle. My domain? The limited radius of my shoveling prowess. Entertainment? The radio, crackling with static and promises of a “major thaw” that seemed about as likely as winning the lottery with a chewed-up Megabucks ticket.

But hey, a blizzard like this is practically a rite of passage in New England. It’s when the true grit of us New England peoples shine through, or at least, when we discover our hidden talent for hoarding snacks. Because let’s face it, overcoming a blizzard without a well-stocked pantry is like facing a dragon without a sword (I myself would need at least a decent pizza cutter).

Thankfully, my foresight (or maybe just a severe case of potato chip-induced addiction) had me prepared. My fridge and pantry shelves had become a cornucopia of questionable frozen dinners, dubious canned goods, and enough raw pasta to fuel a small army of college students. I may not have been able to leave my snowy castle but I could conquer Mount Snackrifice with the gusto of a famished Yeti.

Days turned into nights, the only clock the rising and setting sun filtering through my blizzard-blurred windows. My social life, already questionable, became nonexistent. But in the quiet solitude, a strange sense of camaraderie bloomed. I waved at my neighbors through the window, their equally snowbound existence mirrored in their bewildered expressions. We were all in this together, united by our shared struggle against the Great White Buffalo (or whatever you call a blizzard with a superiority complex).

Finally, the thaw arrived. Slowly, the snowdrifts receded, revealing a world blinking in the sunlight like a sleepy owl. ‘Rusty’, freed from his icy prison, sputtered back to life with a cough and a wheeze. The world outside, though still scarred by the storm, was slowly returning to normal.

As I drove through the slush-filled streets, the experience left a strange imprint. Sure, it was inconvenient, messy, and frankly, a little scary. But it was also oddly… liberating? A reminder that sometimes, the most important things are the simple ones: a warm car, a full fridge, and the knowledge that even in the face of a blizzard, the human spirit (and a well-stocked pantry) can prevail.

So, the next time a winter storm threatens to turn my world into one giant snowball I will remember the Blizzard of ’78, embrace the absurdity, stock up on snacks, and definitely invest in a better shovel. Because who knows, I might just find myself the unlikely hero of my own snowbound adventure – again. Consider yourselves warned and don’t blame me if your only companions are a chorus of hungry squirrels and a fridge full of questionable leftovers.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sudden craving for pasta and a strong urge to check the weather forecast. You know, just in case…

–30–

I developed an awe of the men (I never saw a woman) who worked for CalTrans at all hours and conditions, keeping the roads open. 
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I don’t remember snow days when I was in school. That’s because school never closed for snow or cold winter days. We had warm hats, scarves, mittens, boots, and snowsuits. Think Ralph’s little brother in A Christmas Story. And we walked to and from school. So, it’s no surprise that I pulled my three little kids on a sled to school one snowy day so the oldest two could go to school, only to discover school was closed. This was my first encounter with snow days.

In my defense, the internet, cell phones, texting, etc. didn’t exist back then. I’m not sure how I was supposed to know it was a snow day. Maybe I missed the call from the school secretary while I was pulling that sled. My memory is that snow days were infrequent for my kids and a fun break from school. Because there so few of them, I don’t recall having to make them up at the end of the school year.

For my grandkids, snow days were more frequent. In January, 2014, we experienced a snow/cold snap that extended Winter Vacation by several days. At this point, most parents were suffering from frozen spirits and minds, numbed by the challenge of finding even more indoor activities for their housebound children, who had missed 18 days of school and counting … Traditional winter delights were out:

• No sledding – too cold
• No ice skating – not only too cold but how to find the ice under all of that snow
• No field trips – car is also frozen

That January, my four-year-old grandson “attended” preschool five half-days a week in Indiana. I use the term “attended” loosely because since winter vacation ended January 3, he had gone to school five times. That’s right, he had 14 “snow” days before finally returning to school. That same winter, my local granddaughters spent several days playing in my basement when it was too cold to go outside for a chunk of time that extended Winter Vacation an extra week.

That did leave lots of screen (and screaming) time. One of the days, I asked my 7-year-old granddaughter to make a list of what we could do to entertain ourselves while the -45 wind-chill raged outside.  Here’s her 9-point plan:

1. Bake a challah
2. Balloons (as in blow up, tie, and hit with an old badminton racket)
3. Wacky string (to be squirted all over my basement)
4. Bowling (home plastic version with her keeping score and mysteriously beating her sisters)
5. Roller blades and scooters (also all over my basement)
6. Dance to What Does the Fox Say?
7. Have a pajama party
8. Watch a movie (maybe The Swan Princess for the 25^th time)
9. Maybe do a hard puzzle or build something with Legos

My grandkids may have been bored, but at least they were safe. What about all of the kids whose parents didn’t have sitters or grandmothers crazy enough to entertain them? Snow days create tough choices for them. I doubt their employers gave them paid snow days off of work, so they had to choose between non-paid time off work, the threat of losing their job, or leaving their kids home alone. For some children, school is their safe haven and the place where they receive two of their daily meals. Was anyone thinking about them?

I know from 25 years of personal experience as a preschool administrator how hard it is to make the decision to close school. Generally, we did it whenever our local public schools also closed. And that was almost always due to massive amounts of snow and ice making travel dangerous and parking impossible.

On days I kept the school open despite bad weather, mostly because our public schools were also open, teachers were surprised that people showed up – lots of them. Maybe these parents had older kids and were out anyhow. Maybe they had children with special needs for whom a break in the routine was a disaster. Maybe they walked, pulling their kids in sleds, veterans of Chicago-style winters. I made no judgments regarding their decision to come or about parents who opted to keep their children home.

Here’s a great snow day story. The superintendent of Brownsburg, Indiana schools decided to keep schools open on a snowy, cold January day during the years when the weather was more typical of midwestern winters. He was deluged by tweets and Facebook posts decrying the decision. One parent asked, “How would you like to stand at the bus stop with my kids in this weather?” His answer was, “Sure, tell me when and where.”  He showed up at her bus stop with shirts for the kids that said #Bulldog Strong and waited with them for that bus. Bravo for literally taking a stand on this issue.

These days, we have gotten to the point of closing schools based on weather forecasts, which are often wrong. Now that schools, post-pandemic, are capable of having remote learning days, there are even more school closings, but instead of snow days when kids could play outside (weather permitting), they are stuck in front of a computer doing zoom lessons. I think romping in piles of snow or playing in grandma’s basement for a good, old-fashioned snow day is probably better for kids in the long run.

 

 

“My ex-husband thought of himself as a ‘breast man.’” She paused. “What have I gotten myself tangled up with here? A ‘floor man?’”
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