Soapbox

The traditional question is always, "Will March come in like a lion or a lamb?" This year it has come in like a lunatic.

A few days ago it was 60 degrees. I say this just to torture myself, as I look out at the snow blowing almost sideways past my window. They say it’s about done. Let’s hope so.
Friday morning I drove Katie in to school around 11:00 (it’s testing week, and she doesn’t have to take that test) and the snow, while micro-fine and fairly light seemed determined.

"I smell an early release" she said as I pulled up at the school.
"Listen Kate- call me when school lets out. I know I said it was OK, but if this keeps up, I don’t want you going out with your friends this afternoon."
A few hours later I was out front shoveling when Jason’s car pulled up into it’s traditional slot at the curb. I expected him to just let her out and scoot on home, but he stopped the car and they both got out.
"Oh my God!" Katie said as she approached me. "That was an adventure!"
"Are the roads bad?"
"Well, when you’re doing that pumping the brake thing," Jason said "…and you’re still sliding out into the intersection anyway… what should you do?"
"Pray, basically" I said. "Look, don’t try to drive home. Call your mom, and if she wants, I can drive you home."

After several conversations (that apparently involved discussion along the lines of "Since when does come straight home mean after you drop your girlfriend off at her house?") it was decided that Ted, who was leaving the office straightaway, would drive Jason home in his SUV. Then it took Ted about 90 minutes to make a 20 minute drive, and so it was that Jason became snowbound at his girlfriend’s house for the duration of the blizzard of 2008. This was a real hardship for them both, as you can imagine. I told his mother not to worry: he is safe and quite welcome, and we’ll all be fine as long as the cocoa holds out. Fortunately, with Steve off at school in Athens, we even have a spare bed (once I got all the ironing off of it).

Saturday morning the micro-snow of the day before was replaced with big, fat flakes, moving steadily in from west to east. The sidewalk that I had shoveled twice the day before was not only covered- it was gone. The cars were ghostly white lumps in the driveway.
I opened the refrigerator and cupboards and took stock. Bread, cheese, apples, frozen dinners galore…but I was snowbound with 2 teenagers and no junk food in the house. Oooh, and almost no milk, either. When the weather weenies had been predicting on Friday morning that the sky was falling, I had dismissed it as their usual hoo-hah and (unlike most of Columbus, no doubt) I had not rushed out to buy groceries and driveway salt. Then, overnight, the sky fell.

Who knew they’d be right for once?

"I’m going to the store to buy milk." I announced.
"What? You’re crazy!" Ted said.
"Don’t worry- I’ll walk. I’ll go to the Speedway at 161 and Maple Canyon. They’re probably open."
"It’s blizzarding. We don’t need milk that much. You could freeze!"
"I”ll be fine" I said.
Katie was up, and not expecting Jason to be functional for quite some time. "I’ll go with you" she decided.
"You’re both nuts" her father declared.
"It’ll be an adventure" she said, clearly a child after my own heart in some small way. She set out towels and some trial sized toiletries for Jason and we suited up. Knights preparing for the joust were no more carefully decked out than were we, preparing to do battle with a blizzard. We each took a small knapsack to put "supplies" in and, with chemical heat packs down our gloves as the final safeguard, we stepped out into the elements.

It really wasn’t too bad. After all, we were in residential Columbus Ohio, not out on the prairie, but it was a bit eerie with the streets so empty and quiet. We walked down the tire tracks in the middle of the street, since the sidewalks were over our boot tops in many places. It was tricky going- like walking in deep sand, but not that cold, and really, not that windy. As we walked we chatted, first about Katie’s college plans and the fact that the college she most wants (University of Chicago) doesn’t actually offer her major (Architectural engineering) and what she plans to do about that. In no time we approached the intersection with Route 161 and the Speedway station there.
Our neighborhood might seem almost deserted but the gas station was hopping. Cars were filling up at all the pumps, and more were waiting in line. As we watched a line of mail trucks left the post office across the street and headed out to fulfill their promise of "neither rain nor sleet" and try to get the mail out. Loud voices called our attention to the fact that a lot of cars were having trouble getting up the small incline that led to the intersection itself, and people were out and pushing in more than one spot. We watched for a minute, and then headed inside.

"Anything you want, Mommy will buy for you" I told Katie as she pushed her ski goggles up and looked around.
"Cool" she said and started filling her arms. I got a half gallon of milk and then perused the junk food. 2 teenagers, 2 days… plus I was going to need shoveling fuel myself….
$19.74 cents later we loaded up our backpacks and headed out again, secure in the knowledge that we had enough Pepsi, Fritos, doughnuts and Gatorade to last 36 hours. On the way home we stopped several times to help stranded motorists, the first stuck out front, trying to turn into the Speedway parking lot. As we pushed, I heard a familiar (and usually beloved, on days like this) sound and looked up to see a triumverate of snowplows moving down Route 161… and plowing all the cars and mail trucks struggling to get free at the intersection under 3 feet of snow! We laughed. After all, we were smart enough to walk!

We made it there and back in less than an hour, even with time out for pushing. Katie was right: it was an adventure! Next up: the driveway. I shoveled periodically throughout the day, but the snow was heavy and the drifts so daunting that even an enthusiastic shoveler like me was discouraged. Even the folks with snow blowers were having a rough time of it. Katie and Jason helped me  for a few minutes but were soon distracted by the idea of building a ramp at the top of our small hill, thereby providing extra speed for their sleds. (I had been hoping for some snow fort action like in days of old, but apparently that’s kid stuff.)

It’s getting dark now, and the snow is tapering off. Tomorrow I probably have to work, so I’ll have to finish off the driveway in the morning, and Jason will need to go home eventually, if just to get clean clothes. I’m sure he and Katie will have many more fond memories of this blizzard than I do of my blizzard of ’78, which I was just recalling a few short weeks ago.
My how time flies. Some things never change, though. Junk food is still absolutely required to make it through a blizzard.

…which began when I rolled over in the dark and said "Do I hear water running??" (This is never a comforting sound in my house- see "The Curse of the Water Weenie")
"Yes. Why is Katie taking a shower at 4:30 in the morning?" Ted asked, and I sat up in bed.
"Because it’s election day, and I have to get her to the polls at 5:30!"
I grabbed some clothes and went downstairs and someone (I suspect Boomer, who I think may be getting CHF) had hacked up this and that on the kitchen floor- on the carpet, of course. Oh goodie! On my hands and knees at 5 AM- a nice way to start the day. Then as we pulled out of the driveway in the pouring rain, Katie squints at the old Camry we park at the curb.
"What?" I asked, too busy trying to pull my jacket sleeves down under my hands so I can drive without freezing my hands. I had forgotten that the temp dropped 20 degrees last night.
"I thought I saw glass in the street." she said. Oy vey. My head is beginning to throb.

I dropped her at Parkmoor Elementary (she looked so cute in her "Youth at the Booth: Election Crew" T-shirt! and I’m really proud of her!) (wait- not for looking cute- you know what I mean) and headed back home- as I came up the street that connects with ours my headlights picked up the glint of glass on the street beside another car at the curb.
"Oh s***!" Looks like several people are going to have a bad morning.

Including us. Pouring rain, front window smashed. Some juvenile delinquent pulled the face plate off the radio but apparently, in their rush to smash and grab, they couldn’t get the radio out. So at least they got nothing for their efforts. I slipped in the house, opened the bedroom door and whispered to Ted, "Do you know someone who works in autoglass?" which is a joke, see, ’cause he works at Safelite Autoglass, right? Hahaha.

I backed Ted’s car out of the garage, got a trash bag to sit on and pulled the kids’ car in, and today I get to shop vac the car, little green clean machine the kitchen (don’t forget those carpets!) and then probably clean machine the car too, to get as much water out as possible. And of course, to get his discount he has to actually drive the car in, but first we have to wait for it to stop raining!

Which leads me to my big annoyance- WHY was it a lovely spring day yesterday, and today, VOTING day, it has to suck with both lips? Because people will be worried about the turn-out and this means I will get 20 calls telling me "Go vote! Be sure to vote!" Which of course I did 2 freakin weeks ago, and for sure, if I lay down to take a nap, the phone will ring. I’d just take the phone off the hook but I told Katie she could call and I’ll bring her some lunch.

But seriously- Ohio has such a doofus reputation for voting lately, and I was kind of hoping that an exciting primary with a good turnout would make people realize how important voting really is. C’mon people, a little rain isn’t going to make you melt! A little freezing cold, needle-sharp rain driving down your back while you’re fumbling to scrape the glass off the front seat in the pre-dawn darkness never hurt anyone!

When you have children, if you expect them to turn out like little versions of you… you’re doomed to be sorely disappointed, my friend.

You can share with them your love of auto mechanics, but don’t expect them to have any affinity for a wrench. By all means, tell them how scouting enriched your life and gave you self-confidence, but be prepared for their utter indifference to tying knots and lashing together a lean-to. You can hope to pass on your love of books, or the joy of bowling, and even your personal faith… but you can’t expect them to necessarily take up the mantle.

Kids are their own people- sometimes ruthlessly so. Whether it’s from sheer defiance or because, when their own chromosome square-dance took place they didn’t get matched up with the right gene, children often choose to head in a very different direction than their parents. If you try too hard to steer them, they may just end up farther away. If you let them make their own choices and are patient, you may find that, in time, they begin to circle back around towards their roots and find a happy middle ground.

Such is the way, of course, with my children. Oh, I tried my best to raise them right, but it was hit-or-miss. They share most of my basic values, like honesty and giving to others less fortunate, but in one vital way that is dear to my heart, I was wildly unsucessful.

They don’t like my music.

You can’t say I didn’t try. From birth, I surrounded them with the folks songs and old Irish maiming ballads of my own youth. Instead of "The Wheels on the Bus" I taught them "Peace Train". Instead of Sharon, Lois and Bram, I gave them Peter, Paul and Mary. And, of course, the Beatles. Always the Beatles!

Stephen soaked it all up- every kind of music I exposed him to: bluegrass, gospel, motown, folk and swing- he listened to it, and learned it… and now has AC/DC and Led Zepplin on his MP3. The little boy who sat on my knee singing Gordon Lightfoot now prefers Ozzy Osbourne. Still, he sits quietly and listens to whatever I am playing, and occasionally I will see a glimmer. A  few weeks after a trip to Athens when I played for him  Dan Fogleberg’s "The Innocent Age" he was playing the piano and I recognized the tune to "Ghosts".

Katie actually edits what she lets me hear of her musical taste. Some of the pop music she listens to I really like, but I know she is also into hip-hop and even rap. She keeps that on her iPod, and to herself. She is just sure I will hate it. Well, perhaps I might. To each his own, I know. But it’s more what she’s not into that wounds me.

For Christmas, I asked for and received a copy of Dylan’s classic "Blonde on Blonde" on CD. Delighted, I opened it up and put it on while I was in the kitchen preparing Christmas dinner. Katie was at the sink, washing her hands. she cocked her head and listened for a minute, and then raised her eyebrows.

"Man! And you say my music sucks!" she commented, and tossed me the dishtowel.
"Hey!  Some of it does!" I countered, wounded and scandalized.
"Yeah, but I keep it to myself" she said as she went upstairs to put on Freak Boys Down or Arrested Garbage Supply, or whomever she listens to this week.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a smart-alec child!

Ok, quick- what was happening 30 years ago today? No fair reading ahead: think January 26th 1978?
I was matching socks this morning and Ted was reading the paper when he
remarked, "Why is the Blizzard of ’78 rating front page, above-the-fold
coverage in the paper today?"
"Because… it was 30 years ago? Today?" I guessed.
"Even so…" he said, and I agreed. Slow news day, probably.

Then I read the story, and I have to admit, I never realized what a BIG deal it was! I was safely holed up in my dormitory, and I remember they canceled classes at OU for the first time since Kent State. My mother trekked to campus the next day to bring me snow boots, (the only women’s size 8 left in town, she informed me) dry-roasted peanuts and NyQuil. (I had a cold) Later I followed the train tracks home and got myself a snow shovel and cleared a path from Brown Hall to Nelson Commons, and so was a very popular girl that day. We had fun in all that lovely snow, (I seem to recall stories of some massive snowball fights, and of course sledding down Jeff Hill) which was unusual for Athens. But what was the big deal? My friends and I all thought it was a bit of an adventure, nothing more. Ted remembers it pretty much the same way.
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Another Christmas season has finally ground its way to the finish. (I don’t consider Christmas done until "Old Christmas"- Epiphany) The tree is undecorated at last, thank you notes have been written, school is back in session and I’m more than ready to say goodbye to it for another year .

Before the kids came along I was a nurse, so I was always working either Christmas eve or Christmas day, which was a bit of a drag and cut down on holiday visits with family. At first that was tough but after a while, more secure and entrenched in my own new family, I didn’t feel the need to be en masse every holiday.
When Stephen was a year old, Ted and I decided that from then until further notice, Christmas for us would always be at our house. Anyone who wanted to visit was welcome and we would travel wherever before or after, but Christmas eve we spend in our own beds. Julie used to come for a few years- she liked having little kids to spend Christmas with and they adored her. For a few years the family got together later, around Epiphany and did the whole holiday thing: ate too much, played games, exchanged gifts, admired each other’s children, etc. but after a while that got to be too much work too.

Still, Christmas used to be such fun, even though it was a lot of work. I would decorate the house and collect for charities and bake for the neighbors and as choir director I ran the Christmas eve service, so I was always full of "Christmas spirit" as it were. I have some lovely memories of those years- Stephen’s first letter to Santa at age 4 "Dear Santa- I love you. Mary Crismis." ; the Christmas plays Steve and Katie would put on for us, complete with paper Santa beard for him and paper antlers for her; the night Stephen put cookies out for Santa and 10 minutes later we found them gone- I looked accusingly at Ted, he glared at me- and then the dog sauntered by. And of course, all the bizarre, mis-shapen, achingly beautiful little things the kids made me for gifts that I still have tucked away somewhere. (I once made my mom a clay turtle for Christmas in 3rd grade- I bet she still has it.)
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