Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Snow

Snow, snow, there is no air only huge fat flakes of snow in the beams of the headlights as we pull into the small Bavarian town, windshield wipers laden and slow on the thick, quiet, darkening streets. We are lost. Truly strangers in a strange land in our '53 blue Ford that had been shipped over for us by the Army for our tour of duty. Now what? My dad in his vague German has us directed to the only place in town that can put us up for the night, my brother, my mother, my dad and me. We are ushered into the warm, wood paneled dining hall of a German Catholic girl's school to become objects of great curiosity at the long table of silent girls and nuns who study us in polite amazement. Later we are led up a winding stair to a high garret room with no heat but foot thick feather beds to which all future beds will forever be compared and found lacking.

Snow, sun, bright light so cold you can break it. Colorado Springs, winter of 1956. The hill in front of the school is so fine for sledding and learning to ski, then later we're being pulled in a long line of sleds tied together behind a station wagon with my dad sitting on the tailgate and holding the rope.  Not the sort of thing a parent would do today, but a rare fine memory to have on a sunny, snowy cold day decades beyond that one winter in the wild west.

Snow, a record snow, out of school for weeks it seemed, new kid in town, Rutherfordton, NC 1960. There is fine, fine, sledding on the golf course and a bonfire at night. A good place to make new friends in this new town. Mrs. Carson, who lives by the golf course, will later fail me in algebra and trigonometry but for now, makes us all hot chocolate and is kinder than she will ever seem to me thereafter in her disappointment with my meager efforts in higher mathematics. "But what is it for", I would ask, over and over. It would have helped me to know, really it would. "Just learn it" she said, but I didn't until I was writing algorithms as a computer programmer in my 40s. Oh, the irony!. I finally found out what algebra was for. And the sledding on the golf course was the finest I remember.

Snow, horizontal snow, ropes tied between the parking meters to hang on to. I in my woefully inadequate navy surplus pea coat and really wrong shoes. A southern boy in no way prepared for winter in Buffalo in 1968 or anything else with a baby, a wife and this unforeseen, unplanned life. Hunkering down in this land of winter, smoking pot, watching the Chicago Democratic convention, the election, the war and the Smothers Brothers on TV. I wore a Santa Suit for Sandy that Judy rented.  It was a long, long winter at the end of a short season before another short new season and moving on from everything there to a different where.

After waiting at the bar for two hours for Linda to get off on New Year's Eve 1970 we finally walk out into a silent Sheridan Square into the sparkling new year's new snow about 2 or 3 AM. It was a magically beautiful night - the city at it's best, a new year, a new life, the snow swirling in halos around the street lights. There were virtually no footprints or tire tracks. Miraculously, a lone yellow cab crawls up 7th Avenue and for a king's ransom takes us off the meter from the West Village to the East Village. We were two souls warmed for only this one winter beginning on a fine, lovely, crystalline, new year's night. I had survived NYC now for 15 months, at first, homelessly couch surfing. I  even once stayed in a crummy hotel overlooking Washington Square, same hotel later mentioned in a Joan Baez song. Of course, she was there with Bob Dylan, not me. Nope, not me. I even stowing away in the light booth at the Equity Library Theater theater when I did a couple of shows there. I'd say goodnight to the cast and crew then sneak back in and curl up on the floor of the booth for the night. Finally, exactly one year before this night, on New Year's day, 1970, I'd moved into my little studio on 2nd street between Avenues B & C.  Then this one year later, Linda for the winter, warm, so warm.

The coldest winter of my life was Miami in 1974. Crazy, right? Who'd have thought? But it was the coldest winter in years. There were heaters roaring in the orange groves. I never thought to rent a house with heat. There were 4 of us and I was the smart one who selected the florida room for my bedroom. Well, turns out a Florida room has one or more walls of just screen wire.  So, so dumb, but then Sara showed up to be led astray and kept me warm there and was kind and loving and fine in every way and in the end, got not much for her troubles, I'm ashamed to say.  I had left the beautiful, delicate mad woman, Jeanne, whom I loved but couldn't care for to tarry in the coldest winter of the subtropics and found Sara, who deserved much better than me on the rebound. The guilt would trip me up in the end, only to leave me alone again for a while. I was not to be trusted in those days, (or for many days to come).  "Take warning, all ye fair and tender ladies, be careful how you court your men."  That was me the song warned against.  "They're like the stars on a summer's morning. They first appear, and then they're gone." I thought better of me than that, but had no cause to. Love always seemed so real. For awhile.

The whole Shenandoah valley all covered in snow is a sight to see. We drove in tandem, Reade and I in our two cars from Harrisonburg down I-81 to I-77 and Charlotte. I'd been dumped by Gayle. She needed a believer and I was certainly no believer in much of anything.  It's been good for a while though, driving around with her girls seeing all the lights at Christmas on the snowy houses, thinking guiltily about my own daughter away on the west coast. Gayle's ex, my dear friend, George, lived across the street with his next future ex-wife. We spent Thanksgiving together and watched the Redskins games. It was lovely and warm, really. Of course it never would have lasted with Gayle, but it kept us warm for most of that winter and because of Gayle I met Susi.

The Hollywood Christmas Parade seemed a violation, those palms against the sky all hung with twinkling lights. The snow was up in the Sierras, where we skied in shirtsleeves and hiked and climbed.  The winters were summers and the summer was hell below 6,000 feet. We stepped around suncups over rushing green streams on our way to Treasure lakes for the Fourth of July. Snow and stars and the milky way and lasting friendship and the mountains. Real mountains, not those eastern bumps. Camping on top of 17 feet of show and cross-country skiing in the San Jacinto Wilderness above Palm Springs. California has snow and everything, especially stars.

Many winters later now in upstate New York, my unexpected home, there and back again.  I'm alone this particular winter. Penny is doing a season of plays in Florida, the kids haven't been born yet. I'm working at Circle Rep in the city. The first snow is the best, soft, pure, clean and welcoming. Driving to the country house through a blinding blizzard, I'm the only car behind a plow that just happens to turn off the Taconic Parkway at my road. I park in a soft drift and slog my way up Snydertown Road to my little dead-end dirt road with a penlight in the dark, the crystalline trees arching about the road in a twinkling tunnel of snow. I actually miss my turn and have to backtrack.. I'm walking in over two feet of snow. Finally I make it to the house, pry open the front door and of course the power is out. I make a fire and stoke it good then burrow under the pile of down quilts on the bed. In the morning it's my private wonderland, acres of white fields and forests. I stoke up the fire. The power comes back on. I make coffee. I live in my own snow globe.

Years later, hating the cold, hating the gray piles of snow at the end of the drive, hating the weeks of gray skies and white lawns. Vowing to be gone, but still here. It's spring now, spring, that pale green of the new leaves, forsythia, quince, blue skies, perfect little clouds in a tremulous breeze. Oh, spring, what is winter now but a prelude to glory?  I'll worry about winter later, surely in autumn, I will start to worry some, but Autumn's fine as summer is. Three out of four ain't bad and:

A warm home in winter is a blessing to be counted. Like a loving wife and forgiveness and mending the error of one's ways.