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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The little town we live in prides itself on being rough and ready. Nearly 250 years ago, our fishermen not only fought the British for independence, but they were the ones who rowed General Washington across the frigid Delaware, effectively changing the course of the American Revolution.
Historically, this is not a town that's afraid of a little weather.
Talk to my husband or anyone from his generation, and they'll tell you that in the 1960s and 70s, "snow days" were virtually unheard of. Kids were made of tougher mettle. They trudged through blizzards to get to school, uphill, both ways. Yada yada yada.
Well, not so much anymore, I guess.
These days, our district (like all the towns around us) seems very quick to cancel school. Granted, we've had some extreme weather this winter. And, there are probably cost and liability issues. But, it seems like some of the cancellations we've had were unnecessary.
The night before a potential snow day, my daughter and her friends use all of the social media at their disposal to buzz about it. They text and tweet and tumble and twitter. They check the school district website incessantly and tune in to the WBZ Storm Center to watch the crawl of schools that have already announced their plans. In some tribute to its hardy past, perhaps, our town is typically the last in the area to make the call. The high school students rejoice. And then the phone calls start.
Our automated system accommodates multiple numbers for each family. First the home phone rings, then my office phone upstairs, then my husband's mobile, then mine. And while I may complain that the district is a little too quick sometimes, it's even worse when they wait until the last minute.
This week, the phones rang at 5:00 a.m. Say what?
Thanks so much for the wake-up calls. NOT!
When my daughter was little, a snow day was a special treat. At that point, I was still working for an ad agency in Boston, an hour's commute away. No school meant that I would be "WFH," working from home. (These days, with my office on the third floor of our house, that little acronym has lost its allure.) We would bake cookies, do art projects, play games, maybe pop some corn and watch a movie.
Now? Well ... first of all, my daughter, like teenagers everywhere, never seems to get enough sleep. So, as soon as the snow day was officially called, my husband snuck in and turned off her alarms. Both of them. When she finally did appear a few hours later, a little bleary-eyed in her flannel "Phineas & Ferb" pajama pants, she curled up on the couch with her phone. And that's pretty much where she stayed.
Let's see. She watched several episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" on Netflix. Then, she switched over to syndicated reruns of "Dance Moms." (I can't really criticize this; it's a guilty pleasure of mine too.) She was bored, but not bored enough to get up. Any suggestions I made ("Clean your room," "Read a book") were met with lackluster eye rolls. When I bothered to observe aloud that maybe, compared to long boring hours on the couch, there was something to be said for going to school, she looked at me with an expression bordering on the pity one might feel for the mentally deficient. I left her alone.
Despite my best efforts — I recently bought some SAT prep flash cards on Amazon — I'm no Tiger Mother. If I were, my daughter could have used the snow day to practice her violin. Or study calculus. Or read Proust. In French.
Instead, we used the snow day to prove the second half of the theory of inertia:
A body at rest remains ... a body at rest.
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Well, gentle readers, I'm happy to report that we weathered the weather.
It's still snowing here, but Nemo, the "historic blizzard of 2013" has pretty much passed. Overnight, we had record-breaking winds (greatly amplified inside our two-hundred-year-old home — the entire place shuddered) and about thirty inches of snow. I say "about," because it's nearly impossible to measure. Cars and shrubbery and lawn ornaments have virtually disappeared under massive drifts.
Yes, it was a big storm. But, the level of anxiety (nearly panic) that we witnessed was just a bit ... um ... exaggerated.
My yoga teacher said it best on Friday morning (to our half-empty class). "This is New England. It snows."
The night before, I tried to do some grocery shopping while my daughter was at the stable. After more than twenty-five minutes circling the parking lot at a local Market Basket — and fearing for my very life every time a spot opened up and some bigger, faster driver nabbed it — I gave up. An endless stream of heartier customers poured out of the store with their carts piled high. Bottled water, milk, bread, toilet paper, Duraflame logs. You would think we were out in the wilderness somewhere, and not in suburban Boston. Or that we were facing a nuclear holocaust or a zombie apocalypse at the very least.
As I retreated, I decided that my family could subsist on frozen bagels, canned soup, ramen noodles and tap water for the next day or so. But, just in case I was wrong, I baked a batch of cupcakes. I also have boxes of Valentine's chocolate if things get really desperate. (If only the Girl Scout cookies we ordered had been delivered sooner!)
Snow emergencies are a not a time to worry about a balanced diet.
I can joke about it, but we have many friends without power this morning. That would certainly not be fun. Our biggest disappointment is a cancelled trip to New York to see my sister in a show. (We will try to reschedule.) Otherwise, as long as my husband's back holds out, we should emerge unscathed.
One nice thing about the storm (besides the hushed sugar coated views from all our windows), is that it turns the typical surly teenager into a wide-eyed child. My daughter who, unable to go to the stable today, would otherwise be sulking around the house is outside with an old friend, sledding. She gladly put on layers, snowpants, a ski parka and even a neck warmer (okay, not so glad about that one, but trust me there was an admirably minimal amount of eye-rolling).
The hill they've chosen is behind the antique elementary school where they went to kindergarten together. So not only will their excursion include some wintry fun, but they will probably be reminiscing a bit too.
Meanwhile, we've turned off the TV. How much non-stop storm coverage can we really take? I'm heating up some soup, and we'll spend the afternoon in front of the fireplace. I have some copywriting to do and my daughter, once she returns, has homework. We are safe and warm and dry, and very grateful for all of the above.
Later, I think we'll bundle up and take a walk through town while the roads are still clean and car-free. If I get lost in a drift, please send a St. Bernard with supplies.
You can skip the barrel of brandy and send a box of Thin Mints instead.
