A week ago, I had a low-level panic as I glanced at the 10 day forecast for New York. Storm predictions have become so erratic that I wondered if the maybe 18 inches would accumulate or if some shift in wind direction, air temperature, or the other multitude of factors (is it only a half dozen?) that determine how much precipitation falls during the hours of the pour down. The meteorologists’ and climate researchers’ forecasts were accurate. My flight itinerary was originally a 6:30am arrival, but I had to scramble to get a seat on a different combo of flights after one set of cancellations, arriving at 3:30 pm instead. By the time I was out of airport, 24 hours after the snowfall stopped, the streets were plowed and the snow banks became ice blocks ranging in size from 12 inches to masses taller and bigger than cars. The streets were replete with parked cars either 60% hidden by the snow pushed up on and around them or vehicles wedged into haphazard parking spots angled at 45-some degrees because the snow was too tall to drive through or too frozen to break with a shovel or bumper. The streets were scrambled, but not chaotic, as pedestrians still walked and drivers still drove on their way even though the shoulders were shrouded in snow, the cross walks pinched into bottlenecks.
As a kid, winter was my favorite season, snow was my favorite precipitation. On my last visit to New York, a man who was a cab driver, from Central America, told me how he loved the snow but there had been meager snowfall in the last 4-5 years. Little did I know that 3 months later there’d be more snow falling on the five boroughs than they’d had in half a decade.
The snow was so much fun with the cold air on my cheeks, the fog of each exhale. Also, how the snow banks and ice blocks forced people to have to pause, look to and look at each other, navigate sidewalks and crosswalks in a different way because we could not move in the familiar flows of pedestrians on sidewalks, automobiles through the streets. On my first evening, I approached an intersection on Fulton Avenue where 4-5 people slowed their pace, waiting on each other so they could walk through a narrow passage to get into the street to get to the other side. It was frozen Frogger but rather than the challenge being vehicles in lanes, we avoided slipping on ice. One of the 5 people waiting their turn was a man who looked over his shoulder, staring at me. When I looked at him, he asked me to help him move through the narrow snow bank since he was in a wheelchair. I walked towards him, acknowledged him and his request then put my hands on the handles at the back of the wheelchair. The break in the snow was just wide enough for the wheelchair, but rather than stay in the black and white stripes of the crosswalk, we moved into the street to walk the next block. He asked me which way I was going, which was a different direction than he was. It was more feasible for us to walk in the street pausing between parked cars when a cop car and a few more vehicles came down the street. I walked 5 blocks with him, considering the different pace, the varied challenges of navigating the same conditions depending on whether I was relying on the four wheels of a wheelchair rather than my two feet.
Over the last 5 days, countless people have expressed their dismay: couched in how awful the cold must be for me, how this was such a terrible week for an out-of-town visitor. Au contraire, mon frére. I used to relish how I’d stand upright when the cold touched my skin, how for many decades I preferred cold, brisk air to hot, humid conditions. I’d packed longjohns, a puffy coat, wool gloves and socks. The only pair of shoes I wore were steel-toed boots. Until this week, I’ve associated these 4 year old boots with cutting grass, slaughtering pigs, shoveling soil, and trudging through mud, not with frigid New York conditions, stomping through 2 foot tall masses of snow because when I lived there, there were no steel-toed boots in my closet. This week, I tracked others’ footwear: sneakers, high tops, hiking boots, dress shoes, and other footwear, Skechers, Jordans, Uggz, and even a few Timberlands, which were pervasive 20 years ago. These country shoes carried me through the city’s bluster and bustle better than anything used to lace up.
washing dishes: a father’s glimpses 