SNOWMAGEDDON

I was there.  

My brother was actually in that snowplow and drove it through the night at the mobile home park where he lives and works. It started snowing at 10:00 a.m. on Friday morning, and it didn't stop until Saturday around 3:00 in the afternoon. I was a little nervous about losing power and having to huddle in my coat and scarf, trying to keep my mother warm in front of my brother's wood stove, but we were lucky. We were warm and dry and had cable TV with movies on demand, beer and bourbon--and a fridge full of home cooking, thanks to my brother's girlfriend.

 Thanks to my brother's can-do attitude and his 4-wheel drive truck (the '57 Chevy is his "IRA"--not his everyday vehicle) I managed to get out of  Baltimore Washington International Airport last night in a brief window of clear weather and plowed runways even though the roads were a single-lane slip and slide with trees down under the weight of the snow. A back-hoe was on the roof of an airport parking structure when my brother and I pulled up in his truck. It was dumping snow on a 4 or 5 story-high pile shaped like the Matterhorn.

Now I am back in the Land of Too Much Rain. But I'm grateful for these experiences with Mother Nature that remind me how little control we really have in this life.

Ice-covered country roads, blizzards and deluges make me a weird kind of happy. They bring on a savoring  that is so full and sweet that it can keep me awake at night as I lie in my bed wide-eyed at the  power of love.