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My Sense of the Snow - By- Ravi Shenoy Ravi Shenoy was born in India but has lived in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, France and Finland. She has been living in Chicago and its suburbs since 1974. She loves her job as a reference librarian in a large public library. She writes book reviews for a professional journal. She is the mother of two daughters, one of whom is now married. Her husband and children look after her, leaving her free to watch storms, trees, birds and animals.

We were in the midst of a blizzard that dropped 12 inches of snow; my husband was at a meeting in California. As I shoveled the driveway, these visceral thoughts came to me.

SNOW

I don’t like driving in it. Sometimes the battery dies and the car has to be jumpstarted. I don’t like the way the car fishtails when I try to stop. At the end of a long day, I don’t like digging the car out, scraping the windscreen, starting the car after ensuring that I have not locked myself out. There’s too much multitasking involved.

All winter long I encourage myself with positive thoughts. Think Nansen, think Amundsen. I tell myself as I step into another winter storm-ravaged night. But frankly, I’d rather think Robinson Crusoe.

I don’t like wearing gloves, because then I become clumsy with my hands and I don’t like the slush that seeps into my socks. I don’t like the fact that the cars parked in the lot occupy two spaces.

I don’t like walking outdoors in winter either. Often in the midst of a serious argument I have found myself floored, or rather on my backside.

I don’t like the rigmarole of dressing for winter, gloves, boots, hat, scarf, coat, and layers. I spent ten minutes looking for my gloves this morning and when I found them I had lost my car keys and glasses.

I don’t like the darkness of winter. The Finnish Lapps have a word for it kaamos. It sounds too much like the Urdu khaamosh.

I don’t like the wind blowing in my face and tearing my eyes and my nose running when I waiting for a train on a platform with no shelter. One night I was the only one on the open platform, and just when I was about to turn into an ice sculpture the moving yellow lights of the train appeared. It was like a scene from Doctor Zhivago.

BUT

I like the snow falling noiselessly, I think it’s romantic, especially if I’m wearing my violet cape and there are pine trees standing like sentinels, against a dark sky full of stars. Though these days the stars seem to move and spoil it for me.

I find the scrape of shovel against macadam as I push the snow to the sides of the driveway vaguely comforting. It clears my head.

I don’t have to worry if I don’t have space in the ‘fridge, I can always use the garage for an icebox.

I like the lights of Christmas and the decorated homes and streets.

One winter, a possum fell into our basement well. I heard him scraping against the glass of the basement window. I stuck a sawed-off wooden plank into the well. I also threw in some carrots and apples. He finally got the idea and clambered up the plank to ground level. And then without a backward glance in my direction to say ‘thank you’ trotted down the sloping snow-covered backyard into the woods as though he had serious business to attend to. Snowflakes swirled in the air and sparkled. The snow lit up the night as though I had left the decklights on. It covered all the hard edges of the sloping backyard, till the only imprints were the paw marks of the possum on the fresh snow. The next morning the sun came out in a dazzlingly blue sky. The bark of the trees so dark against the white snow. Snow sculptures hung from eaves and roofs, such rounded symmetry. The oval metal table on the deck was capped with a dome of snow, each upturned chair leg had its own miniscule one. The deck was covered with a wave of white stuff. Nature must love curves!

Best of all is the relief I feel when I swing into the driveway after an uncertain ride. The hairier the ride the better it lends itself to embellishment later when the wind is howling outside, the wolves baying (maybe only in my imagination) and the snow piled deep. There is heat and electricity and food in the fridge, and my loved ones are all about me. Well at such times I don’t mind the snow at all.
If you get my drift.

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