Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
The little lamp
Refused to go.
Morning or no
It dug its toe
And held on glowing
In the snow.
For The Daily Post
Radiant Rebel
snow
Winter Brr…
If the winter weather’s getting you shivery around the edges
and strikes a bit of waddle in your walk,
think cute …
If the chill gives you the blues,
puff it out
with color and
with attitude …
If the cold brings out the grump,
Forget the chill,
go at it
with a friend …
The chill … will end …
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Onward, Ice-world. Here I come!
When the Universe’s retrograde is retrograding, hang on for the ride…
Day in point:
I had to get to a medical appointment today. Knowing I’d be rather low-energy before it, I had pre-ordered car-service. Received a call that the car broke down and they won’t have a replacement in time. Nothing for it, but try to get a cab.
Ha! No chance. Half the city was waving hands at a handful of, obviously full, taxis. However, I’m a determined (read: desperate and wobbly) girl. So I froze. Waited. Tried the other corner. The far corner. Across the street. No luck. Figured there’s no way, gave in, took the bus crosstown (which included getting over the ice without adding to the tally of ‘wrist cases’ in local ERs) with the hope I’d maybe get a taxi there the rest of the way.
Joke’s on me–the same handful of taxis were still, well…full. Can’t blame them. I figured, if I got a taxi, I won’t be giving it up, either, if I were me… Nothing for it but to take the downtown bus, which of course picks up passengers not where it is plowed but on the unplowed side. It would be adventurous crossing on a regular snow-ice-mush day (even with a cane with an ‘ice-grip’ extension) but especially today when I was a bit vertically challenged already. Owee for my back, but yay for me, I did it. Stood there and froze with my fellow non-taxi-worthy-New-Yorkers. Finally a bus came that did not have a “next bus please” on it. We all of us levitated (um…not exactly) over the mountains of ice and ice-rinks into the bus which moved, sort of. SLOW SLOW, downtown.
I was of course late to my appointment, not to mention used up more energy than I did not have to begin with. But, I did it. Got through it all. All is okay now.
It wiped me out and was no fun BUT, in the tally of lessons
I did get to:
1.experience the full marvel of -10 windchill (it is especially poignant after a few minutes–for best effect, try more than 10 while standing on ice in a corner where the wind is amplified by tunnel-effect).
2. practice management of feelings of extreme jealousy when a lucky hand-waiver two blocks up from me managed to snatch the one available taxi in the whole town. The feeling was exquisite, shared by the people around me, and I think is generally magnified in direct opposite correlation to the temperature outside.
3. bond in an unspoken way with my fellow bundled up New Yorkers–we really ARE all the same, above all those layers (you can’t tell who’s who anyway…).
4. exercise my body’s frost-defrost-frost cycle (of which I had a preparatory course the day before when the heat broke in my building and we had indoor arctic chill–I did not even know I was getting get-to-doctor-bootcamp! See how everything happens for a reason?…)
5. put my new found learning into immediate action by instructing my pick-you-up-after friend to UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES to leave the taxi she was coming in. Wobbly or not, I was going to come down to her instead–no way I was giving up a taxi I knew was half-mine…
Total tally for the day: Universe 10, Na’ama 5 (but hey, five is more than none!) 😉
Onward, ice-world. Here I come!
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Writing in the Snow
Snow is blanketing the East Coast, burying the rulers of measuring reporters, blowing microphones and umbrellas out of people’s hands, stranding motorist on highways, passengers on buses, travelers en route.
And it is COLD.
Too many cars on streets made plows lag in coming. They are yet to transform some paths from the look of dusted by ruptured sacks of confectioners sugar … to gray mushy lines of hiding blacktop. There’s a hush outside. The world stunned by winter’s hold.
People walk gingerly–confectioners sugar it might look like, but up close underfoot this is mighty slippery stuff.
From my window, everyone is a walking story:
Here are the sturdy footers, placing one foot in front of the other in assured steps;
There come the triers, delicately placing one foot and then another, almost in a dance;
The best-spot-placers, scanning the sidewalk for less slippy spots before zigzagging their way along, concentration at the full;
The text-n-sliders, keeping half an eye on the sidewalk and the rest on the small screen;
The unprepared, stepping tentatively in not-quite-appropriate footwear and attempting to ignore physics–a body in flat shoes will sink in snow piles;
And the snow-welcomers, faces upturned to the wind against tugging-hands at their wrappings. Many grasshoppers-size with bookbags and lunch boxes, dismissed early from school, drunk on Snow-Day delight;
There are the careful-balancers, holding canes and walkers or clinging to shopping carts or someone else’s elbow, praying to not throw out backs or hips or knees or ankles, casting yearnful glances at the sure-steppers and grinners, nostalgic peeks at grasshopper magic, and a half-envious, half-knowing shake of head at the texting and unprepared, for their careless take-for-granted health.
From my window, everyone becomes walking story. Stories in the snow.
How do you write stories in the snow?
Na'ama Yehuda 
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