Snow

It’s snowing today and I’m going to have to shovel the sidewalk. Snow makes me think of Dad. For most of my life, Dad shoveled the sidewalks of our houses, even though he has always lived in Manhattan and had to travel to Brooklyn to shovel. I would “help” with my little shovel, but he did most of the work.

Once, a snow drift blew up against the front door of our house and we couldn’t open the front door until Dad came and shoveled us out. Another time Dad took me out to play on a day when the snow banks were well over my head and the whole world was endlessly white. And I remember how mad he got when that rare treasure of kids and teachers, a snow day, happened while he was on sabbatical, sitting on a beach in Honduras.

My snowiest memory of Dad is of a trip we took to Gloucester when I was about 7. It was a school vacation during the winter, and Dad took me and my best friend, Georgia, on the train. It was snowing the whole way up, and by the time we switched to the commuter rail in Boston – the train with the big purple stripe – it was really heavy. On the way to Gloucester, a tree blew over, blocking the tracks.

From years of roaming the woods around Gloucester, Dad knew where we were, and knew a route through the woods onto our property that would have brought us through our woodlot to the back of our house. But the conductor wasn’t about to let Dad off the train with two little girls in a blizzard. A group of men got off the train and rolled the tree off the tracks.

When we got to Gloucester, we were stuck with no way to get to the house. The only thing open was an old fisherman’s bar across from the train tracks. Holding Georgia’s hand, Dad headed for the bar with me trying to follow right behind, but my mother had dressed me in a waterproof poncho that kept blowing up and covering my face. Somehow we all made it to the bar. I had never been in a bar and didn’t really know what it was, but it was warm and there were lots of the happiest adults I had ever seen and they were all singing. A bartender fished out a couple of dusty packets of hot chocolate for us to drink while he and Dad discussed what to do.

Eventually, the Gloucester police, with their snow chains and four-wheel drive, came and gave us a ride – my first time in a police car!