YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT A KID ANYMORE when you find yourself hoping it won’t snow. The last time a major snowstorm hit Baltimore, where I live, back in 1996, I was only 15. The night before the storm arrived, I watched the late news with my younger brother and sister–and our parents, who grumbled as the weatherman delivered the bad news. But with each successive bulletin revising the projected snow total upward, our smiles grew wider. By the time the forecast passed 12 inches, we were in rapture.
When I woke up the next morning, a glance out the window confirmed that the skies had more than delivered: Nearly two feet of white powder lay on the ground. No need to so much as turn on the television–school would be closed for a week. A cameo appearance at the dig-out would dispatch the younger generation’s obligation for work, and the rest of the time would be our own.
And so it was that I spent five whole days off without a care. The neighborhood kids and I dragged our sleds to the grounds of the Board of Education, where a steep slope drops off to a stream and then a parking lot. We spent the day tearing down the hill and successfully avoiding the danger at the bottom. We watched in admiration as cool college students from nearby Towson University and Loyola College rode down on garbage bags, sheets of cardboard, and cafeteria trays.
Before the snowplows made it to our neighborhood, we went cross country skiing on quieter, rolling roads under tall trees. And we built three-sided forts in the big field behind our house, with packed-snow walls, for a serious snowball fight, boys against girls. My friend Julie’s mom delivered brownies and hot cocoa topped with marshmallows to us outside.
Now, seven years later, it’s a different story. When the “perfect snowstorm,” as one meteorologist quoted in the Washington Post dubbed it, dumped 28 inches on Baltimore in two days, I was the one grumbling. In the days leading up to the storm, the weatherman’s excitement about the impending arrival of a potential record-breaker had left me cold. Listening to the forecasts of ever-increasing accumulations, I’d begun thinking not of play, but of all the onerous consequences of a major snowfall, now that I’m a full-time worker. The days ahead were shaping up to be bleak.
Sure enough. Take the simple business of digging out my car. In 1996–before I could drive–I’d figured fair was fair: Each car’s owner was responsible for shoveling it out. Now, my father was muttering something about my being hoist on my own petard. Not only was digging out my car a major undertaking, but I had to help liberate two elderly neighbors’ cars. Both came out to thank me, and one offered me a piece of diet hard candy.
Then there were the sidewalks. On our street, shoveling isn’t a simple matter of clearing a straight, flat path from the front door to the sidewalk. Most of the houses sit on top of small hills, and from our door to the street, there are three flights of stone steps, about 25 in all, plus two landings. It’s a lot of work to shovel one house–and the same elderly neighbors who needed help with their cars also had front stairs needing to be cleared. Since my brother is a Marine now and long gone to the Middle East, it was up to my father, my sister, and me. Mom informed us that she does not shovel snow.
But as bad as the dig-out was, it turned out the alternative–staying inside–was no fun either. I could watch an “ILove Lucy” marathon with Mom, listen to a CD of Civil War string band music with Dad, or put up with my sister endlessly giggling on the phone. Even reading got tiresome. And my attempt to escape for a walk with our dog was a dismal failure. Normally Molly loves the snow. She paws at the door to go out. She’s a Siberian Husky and has been known to fall asleep outside when it was snowing. But she didn’t like being up to her shoulders in the stuff and having to proceed by laborious leaps. When we’d gone only a few feet, she turned around and looked at me as though I were crazy.
We slunk back home. I made tunafish without bread–we’d run out–for lunch, and brooded over the prospect of Hamburger Helper for dinner. I wondered when the snowplows would get through. I thought of 1996, and somehow the shine had gone out of our sledding and our fort. It didn’t seem possible: How could anyone ever have looked forward to a snowstorm?
–Rachel DiCarlo
