The Biblio File February 2019 Essay: “Snowfree”

by | Feb 19, 2019

SNOWFREE

“Snowpocalypse”, or “Snowmaggedon”, which blasted us with over two feet of the white stuff and some serious wind, is about over. I was mostly snowbound for a week. Except I didn’t feel bound at all. The time seemed free, unfettered, and, as a friend said, “low pressure”. I noticed things more—both “out there” and in my less-distracted than usual head. In the afternoons, I binge-watched “13 Reasons Why” on Netflix, and the number Thirteen stayed with me, prompting me to come up with thirteen things I noticed or had confirmed:

1. Binge-watching twenty-six episodes of “13 Reasons Why” induces way less guilt during a snowstorm.

2. The three-foot-long icicles outside my kitchen window were so sharp and shiny, they scared me.

3. There is a special kind of happy that comes with printing out all three hundred and fifty pages of my almost finished novel, reading it, and finding out I don’t hate it.

4. There is another special kind of happy that comes with going to church, thinking there’ll be only ten or so people there because of the snowy roads, and walking into the sanctuary where thirty five people, all of whom also thought there would be only ten people, have gathered to worship.

5. “Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect it for Their Writing,” (Chapter 10 in Brenda Ueland’s classic “If You Want to Write”) is as true today as it was when she wrote it in 1938.

6. I could, if needed, subsist for a very long time on coffee, Pain du George bread, dark chocolate, and those parmesan whisps from Costco.

7. Any doubt that I am an introvert has been permanently dispelled.

8. There is not a much sweeter sight than kids sledding down your driveway, unless it’s a neighbor who’s come to shovel out your driveway.

9. Having a generator ready to go if needed and a husband who knows how to handle it is Golden.

10. Dancing is really good exercise, especially if you’ve been lying up, binge-watching all day.

11. Ed thinks it’s funny when I slip into my green flannel nightshirt with the white snowflake design and tell him, “I’m dressing for the occasion.”

12. It’s a tossup as to which is better—Shawn Colvin’s or Sting’s version of “In the Bleak Midwinter”.

13. A car trip on icy roads to stock up at the grocery store, where we bought tulips and chocolate, and then returned home to read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43, made for a sweet Valentine’s Day.

Snowpocalypse? Snowmaggedon? Nah. More like Snowparadise.

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