A Blizzard of Memories

[bironic]

I am, The Weather Channel tells me, witnessing what will be a hundred-year record snowfall here in D.C., although a foot is still less than what's fallen in Boston and on Long Island many winters in my lifetime, including the year we had early school dismissals and I lost Peter David's DS9 paperback in the ice on the front lawn for a few days. Last night on the way home I passed three spinout accidents on the highway and one moron going the wrong way in the right lane; and when I tried to pick up some supplies at the supermarket at 11 p.m., the lines were so long I just came home instead.

Now, safe beneath my blanket, laptop warming my legs, while cars inch down the road below and bundled-up pedestrians pick their way along the sidewalks, I am content, and remembering.

Let's start Memoryfest early this year.

For new friends: This is something I started in 2006 where I post a random memory each day (ish) for a month, and invite you all to read, comment, share your own memories, and above all, talk to each other. Some really wonderful discussions come out of seemingly inconsequential moments in our pasts. More thorough explanations and posted memories can be found in the indices to Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 (such as it was). Since last winter got skipped on account of grad school, this will technically be Year 4.

Day 1: Middle School

When I was in sixth grade, I was the first to get home from school or work in the afternoons. Although this was a habit for a while, I have a clear memory of one winter afternoon in particular when I made a packet of chicken noodle Cup-A-Soup in a mug, with its stiff little rectangular noodles and tough bits of chicken and carrot, and put on my mom's Windham Hill Sampler '94. I remember standing in front of the CD player and listening to the crescendo of my favorite track over and over.

I had chosen to learn the flute as my instrument in elementary school, in part because my mom said flutes made nice duets with the guitar, which she played. It didn't work out, but the piano did. I think I was thinking about that as I listened, even though the duet was between the flute and piano and there wasn't any guitar at all.

Track 3 was the only song my mom tried to learn on the piano.



Hope you're all safe and snug, wherever you are.

Comments

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

OMG MEMORYFEST!!!! ♥

Snow, snow, snow... I had a paper route in grade 6 (to grade 11, yeah). Every winter, because I lived in the snow belt of Southern Ontario, I'd wade through thigh-high drifts with about 25-30 pounds of newspaper. I remember getting chilblains on my legs a few times. :-D

After it snowed, the city would have to plow sidewalks as well as roads. Some years, it was like walking through tunnels on the way to and home from school, because the banks were taller than I was. Living out here, we don't get near that amount of snow but the sunny days are just brilliant, especially when it's below -30.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

You must have been very fit during the winter! Yikes. Were the drifts blue-tinged like you get under pressurized ice in the Arctic?

[topaz-eyes.livejournal.com]

Best exercise program ever. :-) Of course, once I got the paths carved out it got much easier.

No, I don't remember the drifts being blue-tinged. Just very thick. I often had the sense of walking 2-3 feet above ground.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

Yay, Memoryfest!

Your memory reminded me of times in my childhood when I would play songs from musicals on the piano and my Mom would come and stand behind me and start singing. "September Song" was her particular favorite, and I can never hear it today without getting misty eyed.

Snow hasn't started up here yet, but the sky looks awfully threatening.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

's it there now? The Weather Channel said it was headed right for you.

That is a lovely memory. ♥

I don't know if my mom ever sang with me at the piano, but I do remember harmonizing with her a few times while she played guitar. (A memory for another day, I suppose....)

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

's it there now?

Not yet. Apparently we're not supposed to get it until around midnight. While checking for the nonexistent snow, though, I discovered that the street lamp in front of my house is out again. They just replaced that a few months ago. *sigh* Guess I'll have to refind the city's website for reporting things like that.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Maybe if a plow hits it, they'll replace it.

[cincodemaygirl.livejournal.com]

I haven't been out since I came back from work last night when not a single snowflake had fallen. To be honest, I kind of thought this was going to be a lot of sturm und drang over nothing like it has been most other years I've lived here. Imagine my shock at 9pm to see snow falling like mad. Around midnight I watched a man shovel his parking space, and when I passed by the window twenty minutes later it was covered in white again like he'd never been there. Then, this morning, I watched the plow truck get itself stuck in the snowbank it had just made. Whoops.

Meanwhile I sit here in a sweater and huge fluffy slippers, avoiding finishing my Yuletide!

I like your memory idea very much. When I was in middle school I got home first, too; it was still called being a latchkey kid, even. I forgot my keys pretty regularly because my parents usually didn't lock the doors. When they did, I was probably going to be locked out. I developed about five different ways to break into my own home (1. Jimmy the front door lock with something the size of a credit card, usually my library card 2. Go in through the solar heating room in case someone had left the internal door to the house unlocked 3. (my least favorite but the one most likely to work) Get a bucket from the back yard, turn it upside down, stand on it, pull self through open front-porch window), and if none of those worked I'd have to walk a half mile to the nearest neighbor and use their phone to beg a parent to come home early.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ha. Have those skills come in handy in unexpected ways over the years?

I definitely remember being locked out once -- the house was always locked and alarmed -- and the spare key not being where it was supposed to be, and possibly then waiting on the front porch until someone got home. Guess I could have used your practical experience in breaking and entering!

So far today's excitement has been watching a surprising number of cars make their way down Georgia Ave., some going through red lights, some without their headlights on, some skewing as they try to turn, some going about 2 miles an hour and others tailgating.

[synn.livejournal.com]

Nobody knows how to drive in the snow in the south.
But I'll bet you DC plows their roads.
It stopped last night here, we have about 6 inches -- would you believe, our apartment complex parking lot has not been plowed yet? And the nearest main road has had 1 lane worth in either direction plowed, and that's it.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

You'd bet wrong. The main road next to my building is basically unplowed and one lane wide on each side, and pedestrians are walking with the cars because there are no clear sidewalks. The Metro buses aren't running, either. Maybe that explains why there's been a steady procession of cars all day. *shakes head*

Hope the roads by you are clear before you have to go to work -- or that you can work from home.

ETA that a pair of plows just went by.

[deelaundry.livejournal.com]

There is a guy on our street using one of these (but with different tread) to clear snow off the road.

O_O

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Jimmy Construction, eh? Too bad House fandom doesn't really do AUs.

D'you know, I dreamt last night that I'd emailed you to say I got home safe? I was asleep within about a minute of my head hitting the pillow.

[bell]

When I think of snow, one memory that comes up is of sitting in my 6th grade classroom in a Boston suburb, looking out at the wide, wide windows. I saw all kinds of weather through it, but the glittering of frozen branches in the sun stays with me. I felt sympathy for the trees, over weighed with ice, but it was such a beautiful sight, too.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ice storms are maybe the most beautiful things that I've seen in the northeast. Your sympathy with the trees is really sweet - it invites the same sort of mixed awe that accompanies the ice that is at once so beautiful and so dangerous.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

Awww, memoryfest! And snow! Yes, I have nothing to say really, but I enjoyed the memory :)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Good enough for me. ♥