This may sound strange, or worse, considering where we are geographically and on the calendar but I am not a fan of snow and haven't been since I was a small child. Yeah, living in The Rose of New England where we have all four (and more) seasons sometimes in the same afternoon probably puts me in the minority when it comes to the white stuff. And I'll concede my mood this time of year is in direct inverse to how much snow we're getting, becoming moody and truculent as it falls even though I know there's nothing I can do about it.
When we're where we are now, clearing up from a weekend snowstorm even though we had snow left from the week's previous storm while having to prepare for a forecasted follow-on snowstorm you can feel a little like Jack London's stunt-double waiting for that re-write of To Build a Fire, but this time with a happy ending.
Acknowledging that it's never going to happen is probably the first step in healing, but in these parts the way a lot of us don't clear our sidewalks after a snowfall, you might be hard-pressed to get too many steps in at all.
Snow is a little like life. Both have four letters and both conceal and reveal. In the aftermath of snow, like we had on Super Bowl Sunday, I like to go for a walk around my neighborhood, though the footing can be treacherous as uncleared sidewalks present challenges because the houses and automobiles I walk past everyday look very different and vaguely unfamiliar when blanketed in white.
Saturday under brilliantly blue skies I set off to walk down Broadway to City Hall, make the sweeping right turn and head up Union Street back home. Most, though not all, of the sidewalk around Chelsea Parade was more and less cleared though I was intrigued that the side of Chelsea Parade bordering Washington Street, with the only parking spaces for the entire length of the Street, was fully cleared. Somethings are more mysterious the longer you look at them I guess, so I blinked and looked around.
Earlier in the week, I'd noticed two snowpersons (I'm not necessarily 'woke' I just don't want to precipitate a discussion about gender assignments for piles of snow) on Chelsea Parade made from last week's snow. Based on the number of footprints in the snow surrounding them, I suspect a lot of us did what I was planning on doing, traipsing across the Parade and posing for selfies with them. The one on the Washington Street side had what might have been a tie fashioned from a small branch, and a smiley face with two small stones for eyes.
Both had survived the sunny days and hovering-around-freezing temperatures we'd had since the snowfall so I was unhappily surprised Saturday after crossing over from Lincoln Avenue to see both of them had been wrecked, knocked over, smashed, and trashed, made one with the snow from which they'd sprung and that moment was when the snow revealed to me yet again, lest I'd forgotten, that more often than not, there aren't sinister forces in the universe, or a confederacy of dunces at work to undermine all that we like or love but, rather, we are why we can't have nice things.
We are the people who complain when 'the city' disappoints us but have no problems creating disappointments for others. We're the folks who blow our grass clippings out into the street, allow our autumn leaves to clog storm drains, and don't shovel our sidewalks after snowstorms.
We're quite keen to hold someone accountable as long as it's not us. When it comes to our behavior, we're always very good lawyers; when it comes to others' behavior, we're often even better judges.
-bill kenny
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