Spring WAS due to arrive in just a few days. Even the crocus-heads were peering up from the icey mud in the garden. Maeve couldn't find a single unsullied patch of snow to pee on in her daily inspections. Everything was, as ee cummings stated: "mudluscious". I should have known this was a false promise.
Like a lover one suspects of extra-curricular activities, Spring was lying. She merely blew warm kisses and toyed with our hearts. I had seen this in 1978--wild snow-squalls covering the cherry and apple blossoms in upstate New York, where my heart was cracking, my senior year at Wells College. (Another sad tale...) We woke up needing our long undies and packed-away snowboots. Hats, scarves and mittens were hauled out of boxes we thought we needn't look at till next year. The slog to the dining-hall was filled with melting white.
I'm here, now, not finishing school. My winter clothes are strewn about the room at 88 Maple, along with everything else I own. This seems like the winter that never ends. Even the state of Massachusetts has thrown in the towel. MCAS, the state standardized testing for tenth graders everywhere, has been post-poned! The storm, once predicted at 1-4 inches, max, with rainshowers mixing it up, has now been up-scaled into a "nor'easter"--up to fourteen inches in our area. FOURTEEN INCHES!
My siblings, assembled around the diningroom table yesterday, drinking Guiness and scarfing corned beef and cabbage in honor of St. Patrick's Day, will be nowhere near, tomorrow. They are scattered about the state, doing what they need to do, and I will be home alone, to battle Dad, who tried to run me over with the snowblower a week ago (the last storm) when I refused to budge, for fear he was going to drop dead, at six a.m., snowblowing.
We had a screaming argument in the whiteout conditions of the last storm--he grinding the blade off a plastic shovel I held against the snowblower, to halt him from slipping on the icey driveway. He merely shoved me aside, shards of orange plastic mixing with the vomitous spew of the machine, and I saw blood in his eyes. It wasn't a stroke--it was the kind of Irish Anger and Stubbornness that has marked his entire life--God Help Anyone who tried to tell him what he was going to do--no matter if the intentions were to help! So he creamed the shovel and knocked me over and shot chunked up snow all over my face--until I just got out of his way.
I shoveled until I couldn't anymore and then sat in the Subaru, engine running, parked in the middle of his path, preventing him from at least a third of the job. Until, an hour later, my brother showed--as promised.
"Why the Hell did he get up at six a.m. when I told him I was gonna come and do it around eight? Christ Almighty! They aren't going anywhere! You don't have school! It's still coming down..." my brother growled, one eye on Dad, still shuffling around like an old bear woken from hibernation, around the perimeter of my car.
Meanwhile, as I do my own shuffle back inside, my Mother is screaming that my father's going to have a heart attack and the paramedics won't be able to come up the driveway to get him, etc.
She goes out onto the front porch, her beret pulled over her ears, her scarf wrapped wildly around her head and neck. She "sweeps the front steps"--why? I've already shoveled them. Dad's already shoveled them. Kev's already snow-blown the walk...but sweep, she does.
And so it goes on days this winter...whether school is called or not. Whether my sibs show up, later, or not. If anyone gets up before six, Dad will set his alarm to get up before five...even with the false Spring blowing ice and wicked wind all round him.
So, here comes the last great gasp of Winter 2013. We didn't die on 12/12/12--but we might.
Like a lover one suspects of extra-curricular activities, Spring was lying. She merely blew warm kisses and toyed with our hearts. I had seen this in 1978--wild snow-squalls covering the cherry and apple blossoms in upstate New York, where my heart was cracking, my senior year at Wells College. (Another sad tale...) We woke up needing our long undies and packed-away snowboots. Hats, scarves and mittens were hauled out of boxes we thought we needn't look at till next year. The slog to the dining-hall was filled with melting white.
I'm here, now, not finishing school. My winter clothes are strewn about the room at 88 Maple, along with everything else I own. This seems like the winter that never ends. Even the state of Massachusetts has thrown in the towel. MCAS, the state standardized testing for tenth graders everywhere, has been post-poned! The storm, once predicted at 1-4 inches, max, with rainshowers mixing it up, has now been up-scaled into a "nor'easter"--up to fourteen inches in our area. FOURTEEN INCHES!
My siblings, assembled around the diningroom table yesterday, drinking Guiness and scarfing corned beef and cabbage in honor of St. Patrick's Day, will be nowhere near, tomorrow. They are scattered about the state, doing what they need to do, and I will be home alone, to battle Dad, who tried to run me over with the snowblower a week ago (the last storm) when I refused to budge, for fear he was going to drop dead, at six a.m., snowblowing.
We had a screaming argument in the whiteout conditions of the last storm--he grinding the blade off a plastic shovel I held against the snowblower, to halt him from slipping on the icey driveway. He merely shoved me aside, shards of orange plastic mixing with the vomitous spew of the machine, and I saw blood in his eyes. It wasn't a stroke--it was the kind of Irish Anger and Stubbornness that has marked his entire life--God Help Anyone who tried to tell him what he was going to do--no matter if the intentions were to help! So he creamed the shovel and knocked me over and shot chunked up snow all over my face--until I just got out of his way.
I shoveled until I couldn't anymore and then sat in the Subaru, engine running, parked in the middle of his path, preventing him from at least a third of the job. Until, an hour later, my brother showed--as promised.
"Why the Hell did he get up at six a.m. when I told him I was gonna come and do it around eight? Christ Almighty! They aren't going anywhere! You don't have school! It's still coming down..." my brother growled, one eye on Dad, still shuffling around like an old bear woken from hibernation, around the perimeter of my car.
Meanwhile, as I do my own shuffle back inside, my Mother is screaming that my father's going to have a heart attack and the paramedics won't be able to come up the driveway to get him, etc.
She goes out onto the front porch, her beret pulled over her ears, her scarf wrapped wildly around her head and neck. She "sweeps the front steps"--why? I've already shoveled them. Dad's already shoveled them. Kev's already snow-blown the walk...but sweep, she does.
And so it goes on days this winter...whether school is called or not. Whether my sibs show up, later, or not. If anyone gets up before six, Dad will set his alarm to get up before five...even with the false Spring blowing ice and wicked wind all round him.
So, here comes the last great gasp of Winter 2013. We didn't die on 12/12/12--but we might.
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