Snow days. They're a fact of life here in New England. Each year, when we receive the official calendar for our school district, it includes multiple "Last Day" dates. "Last Day with no snow days," "Last Day with 1 snow day," "Last day with 2 ..." All the way to five potential snow days. At that point, we would be well into July and they stop counting.
Long gone are the days when you watched the local news and followed the crawl along the bottom of your screen to see if your school was closed. Instead, we have automated telephony broadcasts. With our contact numbers in the system, we get prerecorded calls alerting us to any schedule changes.
This week, with "snowmageddon" on the way, we received not one or two or even three calls, but exponentially more. It was entertaining actually. First the house phone would ring, then my office phone, then my husband's cell, then mine. And this happened multiple times. With the storm pending, they cancelled after-school activities Monday. Then school itself Tuesday. Then school, again, Wednesday. Meanwhile, the town called, using the same effective if rather redundant system to tell us that there was a parking ban and a driving ban, that we needed to keep the roads clear so plows could plow and emergency vehicles could get through.
Well, duh.
Sure enough, the snow came down overnight and we woke to a winter wonderland. Although we had slightly fewer inches than predicted (a mere 22 at last count), the winds had been tremendous, creating massive drifts around our house, up on our porch and completely covering our cars.
Since I work from a home office and — miracle of miracles — there was no power of WiFi outage, it was pretty much business as usual for me.
For my teen daughter? Well, she did what teens do best. She slept in.
Once she was up and about, the day progressed fairly quietly. The storm continued. I had some ad copy due and some conference calls ("How much did you get?"). My husband shoveled, carving narrow paths through piles of snow so we could reach the street. My daughter watched back-to-back Gossip Girls while staying in constant contact with her BFFs via her iPhone. We all had leftover Chinese.
Mid-afternoon, feeling more than a little cabin feverish, we ventured forth, my daughter taking a sled and a couple of friends to the hill behind a nearby elementary school, my husband and I walking down to the harbor. Thirty-foot waves broke over one of the harborside restaurants, which nevertheless stayed open serving "chowdah," "lobstah," rum and beer to stalwart locals.
Nice to know that the town has its priorities straight.
Back home, with a fire roaring, we eventually settled in and watched Downton Abbey. It occurred to me, as we sat under an enormous fleece blanket, that this is what New England families have been doing for centuries. Weathering storms together.
Except, of course, for the wide screen TV and the on-demand entertainment, the WiFi, the mobile phones and iPad, the microwave popcorn and the Keurig coffee machine.
Otherwise, it's exactly the same.
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When you first have a child, older and wiser mothers warn you to savor every minute. "Time will fly," they tell you. "Yeah, yeah," you think as you get caught up in the minutia of motherhood. Diapers and bottles and sleepless nights and croup (just once, thank goodness).
You blink and your baby is a toddler, then a child, then a tween, and suddenly a teenager.
On the one hand it's reassuring, I guess. It feels good to know that we share a common human experience. "Where did the time go?" is the lament heard 'round the world.
On the other hand ...
As my now seventeen-year old (all right, I'll say it ... where did the time go?) needs me less and less, I've found myself looking at my own life and wondering the same thing. For example, I started dating my husband when I was twenty-five, more than half my life ago. I've been out of school considerably longer than I was in school. In fact, my thirty-fifth high school reunion is coming up.
And, I've now lived in this sleepy New England town twenty-four years — that's longer than I've lived anywhere. Longer than I lived in New York or Boston.
I guess I live here now.
It's a sobering thought because my life, my home, my career, this town are not what I had in mind back when I was a teenager planning my extraordinary life. Don't get me wrong, I'm blessed in many ways. I make a fairly good living doing something that's appreciated (and that I often enjoy). I have a lovely family, good friends. It's just not what I expected.
I'm a native New Yorker and will always think of that wondrous city of cities as my hometown. Inherent in that is a heightened sense of vitality, excitement and constant change. And potential. That feeling of potential is what I think I miss most.
The town I live in now places tremendous value on history. Despite a good number of multimillionaires in multimillion dollar mansions on the water, the locals who are most respected are the ones whose families arrived many — many, like two hundred and fifty — years ago. Even though I know I'll forever be a newcomer here no matter how long I stay, I do appreciate the town's collective pride in its heritage.
On the other hand, people become New Yorkers in ... well ... a New York minute. I love that about the city. About my city. Immigration reform aside, the promise of Lady Liberty is still very much alive in NYC. And I miss it. Almost as much as I miss the art, and the theatre, and the restaurants, and, and, and ...
Where I live now has been a great place to raise a child — it's small and safe with good schools; it has beaches and bike paths, and it's just half an hour from the stable where my daughter spends most of her time (and much of her love). But, she (and the horse) are off to college in less than two years. I'm starting to wonder where I want to be.
If I returned to New York in my mid-fifties (once again, where did the time go?), could I ever recapture the thrill, the sense of potential? Probably not. Could I ever convince my husband to leave this place he loves so much? Probably not. And if I could, could we ever afford the real estate?
Probably not!
I'll daydream about it, but chances are I'll stay here. It may have snuck up on me; it was never my plan.
But, I guess it's home.
If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to order a copy of Lovin' the Alien at www.lovinthealien.com.
