Snowbound
S truggling with mood, it doesn’t feel weather-related so much as just an accumulation of chips and dings, ordinary things feeling lusterless. It’s the good enough being the enemy of the perfect, things that are functional enough that they don’t warrant replacement, and yet the little dings giving me just a moment of irritation every time I see them, the accusing voice that tells me I am careless and don’t deserve nice things, that I am superficial, materialistic, greedy to be bothered by a crack in a favorite coffee mug when I have a back-up, chipped dishes, a stain on a favorite shirt, the wearing of the beloved quilt my mother made me, a crack in the screen of my iPhone that hasn’t affected its functionality at all (spoiled! and yet I spoil that with which I am spoiled!). Morning pages are filled with bile and I am amazed at my own ability to summon the effort to speak courteously to the people in my family, but I flee to the elliptical where I can turn frustration into sweat.
And then tonight I turn to Raven and tell him he must start calling restaurants on Alberta to find out what is open because it is completely imperative that we get out of the house. It’s when we are all bundled, each older boy pulling a younger brother on a sled down the snow-packed sidewalk, a cheery conviviality in the faces of the people who are out, the magic of the ice coating on everything, the laughter, a playfulness that snow is still bringing out in people even after a week of confinement, that I am able to remember that this will be something that is retold for years to come around family dinners, “Remember that winter when there was a foot of snow in Portland and the city shut down for a week? Remember the sledding, the board games and movies, and the time we all spent together?” It doesn’t magically fix my mood but it gives me the perspective I need to be grateful for what is there, in all its chipped, unglamorous, and ordinary glory.
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I had a bit of a mood turning moment in the ER this week. I was down and frustrated because our less than perfect house was hit with this cold weather mid foundation replacement that left the pipes exposed, and yes, they froze. we spent the better part of the week either without water or with partial water or trying to thaw the remaining pipes. then I got something in my eye that caused a scratch and allergic reaction. I had to go to the ER in the snow and ice. While I was there wallowing in my frustration with this cold weather, and the lack of completion in my life, I saw a mom standing by the ambulance loading doors. One of the nurses stopped to talk to her, asked her how long she’d been waiting. Turns out she was waiting for an ambulance to transfer her son, not much bigger than my older boy, to the children’s hospital where they would have pediatric specialists. And all of a sudden my petty gripes were revealed as the petty crap they were. My family is healthy, in fact, they were waiting for me in the ER waiting area. My injury was minor and easily treated. Our house, while cold at times, is ours and we would all be going there together soon.
I think sometimes those little shifts in perspective are more valuable than any desired change in circumstance could ever be.
everything looks so wondrous in the snow. oddly, i, too, am having one of those days when everything breaks, falls, spills, shatters, from electronics to pottery to people (oh poor monroe with your snaggletooth). there is no place to flee your own clumsiness.
but it’s magic, absolute magic, and it’s changed our town utterly, into a place where people walk up and down the street slowly and talk to one another as they go, it’s gorgeous in a way that thrills me with happiness in icy bursts, soft falling sighs.
@followthatdog — I’d just been reading your blog entries on the emergency room and Walgreen’s, and thinking how the stuff that was getting to me was not so awful after all.
Doesn’t it seem like there should be some long German word similar to schadenfreude for the way that other people’s problems don’t necessarily rebuke us and make us ashamed of struggling with our own problems, but help us remember that things could be worse? It helps, even, the knowing by way of blog that other people are struggling too – breaking the little myth in our heads that somehow everyone else is managing to live a perfect life. I guess we call that commiseration, and it is not to be undervalued.
Hey M! I’ve been following a bit of the ice storm through Dana’s and Zach’s photos- amazing. Of course, from here, where we hardly ever see snow, it looks just gorgeous! Kids are starting holiday, which means that studio is on hold and that we all must adjust to the new pace. I watched “Smoke” last night for the first time in years, still as moving and poignant as ever…sending you lots of love!
There is both a struggle and a freedom in the unexpected.
As everyone said, there is a freedom, an indescribable joy and lightness in its magic, the realization that this nature is still bigger than us. We shimmer, we shiver.
But there is a struggle to force things to be “normal”, to think this is not such a big deal, to try to get out and do everything we would do any other day. Then the next struggle, as we realize it is impossible, and sit back on our haunches to make another plan.
And then, below that, is the other struggle, where we admit that we cannot control this, that this greater thing is more powerful, that without the foundation we take for granted–house, heat, food–we would not survive it, could not protect our children. Our hindbrain tells us to gather together for safety, or run, or…
And there, perhaps, our cracks appear, even larger to ourselves as we cannot escape them. Take a good look–those cracks have stories, too, waiting to be told. Revel in the unexpected, let the struggle free those deeper layers!
Remember that winter when … Remember the …
Remember…
My god my whole childhood flashed before my eyes.
Not the crappy fights, not the drunken relatives, not the mindless ennui…
but the way that memory fashions childhood out of the bits and scraps and embroidered pieces of lifes little rejects that somehow amalgumate into a story that is worth telling over and over and over again.
The other day J. was readin and old post and she said “I am glad we have this so we will remember these little details when we get older.”
My god! what did we do before bolgs?
Good God woman, you’ve been cooped up in your house for nine days now? I am stunned that you are still speaking intelligibly. I would have probably completely lost my mind by now. I am so sorry that I missed your call back! The battery on my phone died, and of course it was craziness as soon as i got back to the house.
You know what is equally strange is how matter-of-fact folks around here are about extreme winter weather. Blizzard outside? Oh well. Better get up a little early to make sure you get to work on time. Of course, this city has the infrastructure to deal with mounds of snow, which makes a huge difference, but I have all sorts of crazy memories of living through South Dakota winters. Wwell, maybe not nearly as many memories as I ought to have, considering how much of that first year here I spent in an alcoholic blackout.) My favorite memory is of the time I was driving home from my job at The Java Cup (a drive-through coffee house WAY before its time) and the wipers AND the heater on my poor little S. California Steel Magnolia were broken. It was some ghastly number below zero, and I had to drive with the window down to wipe the snow off of the windshield and to keep the windows from fogging up so bad I couldn’t see. I stopped at the HyVee grocery store half way home to warm up, and when I came back out to the car, the coffee I had left behind was frozen. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have been out driving in my car that night.
I haven’t been watching the news at all – what’s in the forecast for the weekend? I’m going to try and call you tomorrow…
“Ordinary things feeling lusterless.” And then the numinous breaks through and snow is magic.
I seem to be doing nothing but quoting sententiously today—ergo, Leonard Cohen: “there is a crack in everything / that’s where the light gets through.” And now you can hit me over the head with your coffee mug.