Valentine Snow

            I am back in New England.  It is a Saturday night.  It is Valentine’s Day.  For most restaurants this is a confluence that they experience once or twice in a decade.  At the most romantic spots reservations must have been made months in advance. Take you Valentine out for a romantic evening of a few drinks, a candle light meal and some slow dancing. What could be better?

            But as I look out my window I can see no one.  Almost nothing is moving at the moment, everyone and everything is waiting for what they have been told will come next and come soon.     

            Right now there is four inches of glistening new snow that has fallen through out the afternoon.  It has covered over the piles of older snow and ice that have blown up against buildings or has been pushed by plows and snow blowers to clear the roads and walkways. Those piles now stand higher than I do.  The roads through these canyons of ice and snow are very narrow; there is room for one car or three people.  But no one and nothing is out on the roads.

            It is twenty-eight degrees but, at the moment, there is no wind, so it does not feel cold.  However, very soon, perhaps an hour,  we have been told, over and over, for the past four days, that the wind will begin to blow.  On it’s back it will bring more snow.  Then the wind will blow harder and harder and the snow will fall faster and faster, swirling around in circles, going up as well as down, going across the street and back again.  I will not be able to see the house across the street that right now stands so clear and white .

            The wind will blow harder and the snow will fall and the temperature will drop to zero.  The snow will pile on top of the snow that has already fallen on top of the snow and ice that already sits in huge piles and drifts. A blizzard.

           

            There have been blizzards before, many here in New England, usually, one or two a year.  This will be the fourth, this month.

            This weather development has made the news, the world knows about what is happening here in New England.  It is right up on the attention screens, along with the people who got shot in the head, the people who had their heads cut off, the price of oil, the newsman who lied, the newsman who died, and ads for diamonds and perfume that will stop tomorrow, after Valentine’s Day passes,   Oh, yes, and the kitty-cats that  looked so cute, doing…what?…..I don’t understand.

            In a month the snow will melt.  Then this year’s tornadoes will begin, followed by the big fires, and the big droughts will continues, but hose are not so photogenic.  Last June two people were killed in a small town in Iowa.  They were the first fatalities from a tornado in Iowa in ten years.

 I wonder how that town is doing now.  Do you?