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Winter Land

Mom and I are off on our new family tradtion, a post New Year's gathering in Maine at my Aunt and Uncle's, including my two cousins. Like last year, Mom and I broke up the drive, spending the night around Portland.

This morning I walked outside to get my hair dryer (I hate packing hair dryers in my suitcase; I need a separate piece of luggage for technical, maintenance type equipment. Or something), I was welcomed by a pleasant blast of crisp, cold winter air. I've mentioned, for years now, how much I like the change of seasons, and the weird world we have now, when the reality of global warming pushes winter further and further out of reach. 

Still, I was struck by the visceral joy of the cold weather today. Seeing my breath, bundled up yet my puffy cat unzipped. It's only in the high thirties, and while many would find it weather to complain about, on a sunny morning with little wind and low humidity, it's really very pleasant. It's the morning I understand the people who drive miles to ski, when I miss those fun winter days in the city, walking around window shopping, enjoying the cold.

Things simply aren't that cold anymore, not very often, and not for very long. I am not someone to wade deeply into the politics - or even the science - of climate change; I worry less about the sense of impending disaster than I do simply mourn the loss of the things I genuinely like - a cool day, snow on the ground, leaves off the trees, when those limited hours of sun really brighten a day. A good and proper winter.

So, rather than watch it wistfully out the window, I'm off to walk around in it. More later.

Errand Into The Maze

So, the end of the year is upon us... upon me. And naively, I've decided to opt for the cliche of a fresh start.

The last couple of years have been kind of rough, something I've only generally alluded to, in passing, when I've had time to write. Baring my soul, my personal difficulties, sharing deep feelings.. these things are, oddly (I suppose), not why I write. It stems, I've said before, from my training as a writer, which is to avoid a lot of "I" or "me," try to stand apart from your subjects, make your observations based on concrete assessments, rather than feelings. Then too, there's my upbringing, which I tend to think of as pretty traditional, Western European values. In this age of oversharing, I like standing for old fashioned notions about not putting one's business out on the street, or using a format like a blog to settle personal scores.

But still, this has been a rough year. And I resolved, as part of making a fresh start, to try and unpack and expalin some (at least) of what happened and why, or at least my take on the why of it.

For me, a lot of the upheaval took place as I committed myself, with some trepidation, to pursuing an upward career path at Starbucks. I am, by nature, ambitious and somewhat driven - which is odd, as a Pisces and I think odd to people who don't know me well - and I like to feel I am headed toward a goal, not just languishing. I can, and I will, say that my ambition in a corporate setting varies, and a good bit of my enthusiasm may not so much have been mine as that of others, especially my logtime manager, who I consider a mentor and friend. I'm not so sure, ever that I wanted to be in management quite as much as she wanted it for me.

Still, I made a commitment and I did my best to see it through. And in doing so, I settled on some compromises: obviously, I would have to write less. My hours at work increased, as did my responsibilities, and (again, being ambitious) I know the politics of getting ahead - appear enthusiastic, volunteer, do extra, come early and stay late. And, sincerely, I was enthusiastic. I made the commitment, and I gave the extra time, quite willingly.

My single minded focus also meant some trade-offs socially and interpersonally; less time with friends, less direct contact, less free time. I saw fewer movies. Friends who were more distant, physically or emotionally (or both) became more distant still. I lost touch with people, and in some sense, I'm sure I lost patience - with others, with politics, with myself. Cut to the chase, make a point. Have a point. Don't waste my time.

On paper, things went well for the career plan - I was promoted, I grew and developed in many ways. I became a better manager of people, better able to supervise, and retain my sensitivity. I mastered many things I didn't think possible, and reoriented my thinking and expectations for myself and others day to day at work. There are a lot of positives to see over this experience, and they are the reasons I don't regret my choices. What I did was necessary, and the positive changes were worth a lot of the pain. Just not all of the pain.

For me, the unfortunate turn with my promotion was being thrown into a new, unfamiliar setting, one which, I quickly came to realize was simply "not a good fit for me." It's an oblique, politically correct phrase, I know, but I like its precise imprecision. It wasn't one thing, one person, one event. It was, simply, the totality of things - a bad commute, bad group dynamics, difficult working relationships, no sense of personal connection, no feeling  of being "a part of" a new team. All the things that I loved about my job - the camaraderie, the shared sense of accomplishments, the joy of it - all of it seemed to vanish. I dreaded going. I missed people. I felt like I was losing my friends, and a sense of myself.

And, truthfully, I missed writing. I missed critical writing most, the reviews of films, and TV and arts and the culture. But I missed the daily exercise of it, the sense I had while blogging near daily that my writing was strong and growing. I write most (and best) because I love the shaping of ideas with words. Without that... I have very little.

So I made a choice - not without some consultation and guidance - and decided, as they say, to "step back." Decisions like that, I must say, are remarkably freeing, because they are seen by so many as so unconventional. One of the happiest immediate results I got was a sense of being able to speak for myself, choose for myself, listen to my own inner voice. Few people understand life choices that don't, first, have to do with getting more - more money, more power, more stuff. That's never been my equation, for better and worse. I like to start by figuring out what makes one happy, and working out form there. More happiness, more peace of mind... amazing things can flow when these are in place.

Change is hard, and uncomfortable. I cannot just "go back to how things were." Things are different now, trying to restart this blog is hard, harder than it was before. Resuming regular writing doesn't just happen. It, too, is work. I still have connetcions to build and rebuild, a support system to strengthen and reset. Some of my closest relationships have been entirely (and even irrepairably) changed, and as sad as that was, I still tend to think it necessary and, in some sense, inevitable. We grow, we change, we grow apart. I have come to see that the strongest friendships, the strongest personal bonds aren't about how we stay the same; it's how people adapt to changes in one another. The more flexible, the more opions exist as a result. And then too, I've learned that it's okay to say goodbye to relationships that just don't give you the things you need. What made sense once, at one point in time, may not make sense anymore. And that's okay.

Of course... I'm generalizing, taking myself out of it, trying not to get too personal, too wound up in the feelings or the specific personalities. That's me, what I say and how I say it. I don't regret the past couple of years, but as I thought about it, as I started on a "fresh start," I liked the idea of ending an "errand into the maze". I chased down a lot of blind alleys, tried to work out a set of puzzles, ran myself ragged at times... and now, I'm pretty much letting that errand, and that maze, go. Time to move on, move forward, do more of what I love and make more time for my truer passions. And we'll see what develops. That's the story I'm planning to tell, anyway.

Days Go By (And By)...

I turn around and a week has passed and I'm not writing - or I have not written? - and I realize that all of this is still sort of a work in progress, that I'm a work in progress... and really, that's okay. At least to me. It's the holiday season, work is stressful and occasionally overwhelming, and it's not entirely going the way I would like.... but what does.

Plus, I didn't win Powerball (a good reminder about my essential distaste for gambling), we had a big Thanksgiving Second Dinner (because we got a free turkey from a local grocery store), and life... well, life intervened. 

Thesedays, I ask myself a lot about commitment, about time commitement, about what this dream of writing is and how I ever hope to see it become more than a delicious hobby... and well, I just don't know. Not knowing, starts and fits... that's life, for me, these days.

So days go by, I consider my options, and then I get up and get back on with it. What else, really, is there to do?

The Retail Worker's Dark Weekend

For various reasons, I try never to shop on "Black Friday Weekend", avoiding the post-Thanksgiving madness and the media-constructed frenzy of shop-til-you-drop consumerist Americans and their lemming-like trip to the malls. I've worked in retail too long to see the romance, I don't like crowds, and frankly, the "bargains" of this shopping holiday are overstated.

It's also the case, these days, that I will probably also be working for most of it.

Black Friday this year was notable for a couple of things - one was the encroachment of the shopping into the actual Thursday of Thanksgiving, and the second was a planned, notable, if debatably successful attempt at labor actions outside of many Wal-Marts around the country. Even by the organizers' generous assessments, the number of workers participating in these protests was in the hundreds, though media coverage did clearly amplify the noise and the effect of the protests.

The remarkable thing, really, is that it's taken much of my lifetime for Thanksgiving to be breached by retailers as sacrosanct; only Easter Sunday - and Christmas Day, I suppose - remain as the day of no shopping, and that anachronism may be the hardest to topple, but it's also the one that makes the least sense (at some point, Christian traditionalism will be damned). Literally 20 years ago, I was having conversations with family and friends that one day, obviously, retailers would launch the "Thanksgiving Day Sale" - I mean, heck, one day, Macy*s was sure to notice that there was a crowd of people outside the store after that darn parade, if nothing else - and one more domino would fall on the notion that for one day, at least, we could forestall the real American pastime (shopping, not football).

Let's be clear: we don't close stores for the sake of shoppers. Keeping shopping out of Thanksgiving wasn't some kind of "have respect for this important American holiday, consumerism can wait." No, the point of closing stores was simple human decency for the American worker. Let's take one day, just one day, and nobody, or almost nobody, should have to work. The problem with Thanksgiving, arguably, started with my company, Starbucks; we're the most major corporation I know of that sees no particular reason to close its outlets on any holiday at all. Almost all Starbucks are open on Thanksgiving, for at least some portion of the normal day. Many are open on Christmas. We are almost all open on Easter, normal hours. We close early on days like New Year's Eve and the Fourth of July. But we are open. Always open. And people get bewildered when we close, even for obvious practical reasons, like a hurricane.

But Starbucks isn't just a restaurant - food being the general exception to "closed on the holiday" - we are a retailer, and we are located in shopping centers and malls like the other retailers and we sell more than just drinks and food and we're helping, I think, to erode the idea tbat there's one day, any day, when a retailer should be closed. 

And the people who get punished, when we lose even one day of being closed... are workers.

I was struck, this year, by the fact that, however small, people (and the media) seemed to take nte of the workers. It wasn't a big story, and it was surely subsumed by the stories of stampedes and fights and all the attendant madness of crowds. But the Wal-Mart action and the Thursday opens did get people talking, and talking about what these things mean to workers. Which is, after all, almost all of us. We are a nation of service workers, now, and it means that many of us work to serve the rest of us. It's a different equation about work and what we think of people who serve and it's complicated... and I think we're only just beginning to sort out the cultural and social implications, never mind the political and economic ones.

The Wal-Mart action revived the favorite liberal topics of how bad the big W is, how badly its workers are treated... but Wal-Mart in many ways is really just a stand-in for most of retailing, where the wages are low, the hours are long, and the rights of workers mean but so much. Attempts to unionize most retail workers, in or out of Wal-Mart, are rarely successful, and are unlikely to succeed en masse or long term. To say this is to be labeled "anti-union", and I'm not; but the realities are stark. I've been in retail a long time, and I've known many, many of the women (mostly) and men who work there. Don't take my word for it... but most of them are not interested in a union. And won't be. They are students and mothers and transient and free thinkers. Not being organized provides a kind of flexibility and set of options many workers want, and even need. Unions have not found a way to convince retail workers, generally, of their value long term. And still, that's unlikely to change much.

Even more to the point, as I've said before, because we are no longer a nation of mostly manufacturing jobs, Unions do not really respresent the majority experience of most workers in this country now. Yet "Organized Labor" is allowed, mostly by Democrats, to serve as the "Working Person's Voice" even when the policies unions promote don't necessarily refelects the needs and opinions of most workers. What we need, really, is a change in how we talk and think about the issues of work and labor in this country, and try harder to develop a sensible labor policy that reflects who we actually are and what we actually do. That's why, I suspect, the Affordable Care Act has managed, quietly, to be  a key selling point of President Obama and the Democrats this past election - it's not perfect, but it makes sure many workers will get health insurance, a practical slution many people need. Similarly with the debates of contraception and abortion - in the place where airy philosophical debates mean less than the practical issues of real people actually face.

I don't think we can "save Thanksgiving" from the retail encroachment; the wall has been breached, business needs have overtaken simple decency and humane respect for workers and their families. We will, as we do, work around these new relaities. We are workers, after all. But I think this year may mark another, more refreshing turning point, one where the discussions around our working lives, and the pratcical need for a life beyond work, begins to become more public, louder, and more insistent. It doesn't mean service workers will unionize, and new laws may not be the answer (certainbly, that's not the whole answer); the change we need is cultural, social... not just political, and not just economic. 

And I could go on... but I really have to get on with my day - I have to work this evening.

The Swing Of Things

The suitcase officially went back into the basement today, so I guess the vacation excuse is officially over. We got back home late Tuesday night (memo to self: Miami remains the worst reentry point into the US of anywhere), and Wednesday was mostly about resting up and feeling settled back home. Yesterday was my first morning back at work, which was fine, but as usual, the early rising and energy reqired at work makes the afternoon and evening after a bit of a wash.

That, and I'm finding it hard to get back into the swing of things, especially writing. Blogging lately, for me, has been an off and on enterprise at best, and, admittedly, more off than on. Writing about politics isn't simply frustrating at this point; mostly it feels simply pointless. Watching TV news and discussion programs - which I do a whole lot less lately - is frustrating and, I hate to admit, depressing. The waste of time and energy spent on useless topics ("our first story tonight: something not very controversial that happened on the Republican primary trail, amongst candidates you don't care about, pretty much all of whom will never be President.") really just floors me.

I'm left trying to fashion a blog out of movie reviews, the occasional pithy observation, and some witty asides about television programs I've seen, and no, I don't think that's much of a life, either. At the same time, I have no interest in simply stopping. As much as I like the idea that someone reads what I write, enojys it, gets something out of it... I write mostly because it fulfills something for me. And still, as I do it, literally as I type this, I feel more purposeful than I have... well, since I scribbled a few words about my vacation from a hotel room in St. Kitts.

There are two other obvious complications: I just got an iPhone for my birthday - mostly because my iPod died and I've come to the conclusion that the BlackBerry Curve, while nice, is technically flawed - and I have to admit, the remarkable number of things it can do (listening to online radio of disco remixes whilst reading the AP newswire, for example) means not even having to use my laptop for most anything. Second, on the job front, I am up for a fairly significant promotion and, when I am realistic, getting that promotion changes my priorities. I'm actually ambivalent, on a quiet personal level, about moving up, because I don't really know if I can sustain writing, even at this reduced level, over the long term while in management. On the better days, I resolve to try. On the worse dys, I just curl into a ball and avoid everyone and most everything.

(None of the last few sentences belong in a blog post that could potentially be read by your boss... but oh well.)

I suppose my point is that "real life" - off of the interwebs - has become the life I'm actually spending more time leading. Interesting things are happening; interacting with real people in real time is emotionally fulfilling; pounding the keys about personal and political frustrations isn't much fun (and frankly, has never entirely been my style). There's no real conclusion here, no absolute "that's it, I'm done", no resolution that I'll try harder to blog more. It might happen... and probably, however well intentioned, it won't anytime soon. Life goes on, I'm back in the swing of things, the journey continues... and that, really, is what matters, isn't it?

Island Time

Long ago - before I started working for Starbucks and my income dropped to 25% of what it had been - I liked to take my Spring vacations in the Caribbean. Back then I had a plan (a life's goal, if you will) of seeing every Caribbean island at least once. And I was doing pretty well with it, too. In the months before I quit my old job, I had even made plans to make my next vacation a trip to Nevis, which seemed somewhat remote and less accessible.

But then I quit my job (and just to be fair, I'm not trying to blame Starbucks for my financial predicament; I made the leap out of corporate life knowing that it would be less money and challenging. Not quite that challenging, but still), and vacation plans became, literally, a luxury I couldn't aford. For several years I took almost no vaccations involving considerable travel (Maine, Canada, that sort of thing), and indeed, almost no vacations at all. 

Then I moved back home, and between her financial support (I can't pretend it's not there) and my own mildly improved fortunes, vacations to further off places resumed. There was our lovely trip to Tucson and Sedona in Arizona. We took several cruises (qhich is a quick way to up one's island total, I found).

And this year, I managed to convince her to join my island hopping quest directly.

And oddly enough, here we are, on St. Kitts.

St. Kitts and Nevis are one nation, St. Kitts lying slightly north and east of Nevis, the islands separated by a two mile strait (a moment where the Atalntic meets the Caribbean). Yesterday, spur of the moment, we took a ferry from Bassaterre, the capital, over to Charlestown, the capital of Nevis. Two islands, one vacation.

We have shopped and explored and eaten wonderful food and laid in the sun. Well, technically I have laid in the sun while mom sits in the shade or under an umbrella, rrading a book (the latest Sara Paretsky, on her way to capturing my newest Elizabeth George). My face is red and a little sore, but otherwise, it is a typical tanning adventure. Already in just a few hours over a couple of days, I am several shades darker.

St. Kitts is marvelous, less developed than some of the islands (Nassau, Aruba), not too expensive, with some nice opportunities to eat well, pick up a few duty free items (a watch, some perfume, and my boss's cigarettes), and generally relax. Nevis, as I suspected, is somewhat less developed, but even more pleasantly low key and easy going. And we even managed to shoehorn in some history, seeing the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton (which, for this graduate of Hamilton College, was a treat).

It's the change of pace that I notice the most, not surprising for your average impatient New Yorker... but somehow the cheerfulness and friendliness of most Kittians makes the slow pace tolerable. Our dinner the first night (at a local legendary beachside "shack") took 45 minutes to arrive, what with the crowds on hand for the bonfire and the fire eater (he was quite remarkable). Somehow the wait was just fine. And the food was worth the wait.

Being here, on island time, made getting to writing this post an effort; I have had it in my head for tow days, but life, and wandering, intervened. We only have a couple more days to enjoy, but this trip is already one of the standout vacation choices I've ever had.  Now it's off to my morning run and another great cup of coffee at the local coffee place, a cup every bit as satisfying as the ones I get at work.

I promise to poat pictures too.

Oh, and, Happy Easter. :)

Friday Field Trip: Bittersweet, Hot Chocolate, And The Home Fires

My Friday Field Trip Report is about coming home last night after a short (4 day) jaunt to Maine, a new family tradition you might recall us starting last year. Like last year, everything kind of fell into place at the last minute, reuniting the same group for a second go round of food, festivities, and family time. And again, a good, warm time was had by all.

I said last year... families are weird. This year wasn't so much about how different we were, but, for me anyway, how similar. This year we found more time to spend together as cousins - me, my cousin Christine, and cousin (if not exectly blood related) Jamila. It's complicated... but only on paper.

In person, we make quite a team - we managed a half day road trip to Brunswick to help Christine renew her international Driver's License (she's off again to Mozambique next Monday), shop for shoes, and do a quick tour of Old Navy. Christine and I played hosts of What Not To Wear with Jamila, suggesting new outfits - which was fun, but also depressed me, because I can't stand the show's hosts and the way they try to make their makeover recipients feel bad about themselves.

LIke much of this past year, the trip to Maine was ultimately sort of bittersweet, more good than bad, but something of a mixed bag, at least for me. Which is not to say I didn't love the company of family; to a person, it was wonderful to see them and reconnect (and typical of our stays in Maine, Mom and I actually see less of each other there than at home, even staying in adjoining rooms).

The bittersweet was more about places and memories - thinking of my father's side of the family and how estranged we are, for instance. And the increasing sense that so many bad memories I have lately are associated with Boston - from leaving my old jobs, to having to move, to the collapse of one of my close friendships. Driving home, we listened to a local NPR discussion program about problems with the "T" subway system in Boston, which reminded me how frustrating the commute was, for no comprehensible reason. And it's winter. And it's dark. And it's cold. My family isn't weird. But I am.

(There's also the part about the dreadful decision - which was entirely me - to stop and spend a night at a Motel 6 on the way up. Inexpensive to the point of being depressing.)

But in the end, the pluses outweighed the minuses. Mom and I stopped at a little German market that her sister recommended, stocking up on yet more German and Swedish specialty foods, always enjoyable, and we even tried their little cafe, which had delicious foods and an especially magnificent hot chocolate. We also stopped, as always, in Freeport, where we both found some bargains at the outlet stores. And we made it home in plenty of time for me to restart my viewing of The Vampire Diaries, cause I'm a teenage girl - with TV plans - at heart.

The best, and brightest moments, in Maine, were those quiet ones spent close to the fire, talking with family about times past and present, our hopes for the future, our views of the world at hand. My Uncle makes a mean fire, with all the seriousness and dedication required, as he does most things (and, my Aunt reports, he now approaches vacuuming and ironing with this same precision and seriousness, leaving her free to go out and about). That, plus his encyclopedic knowledge and love of jazz makes for some pretty comforting evenings of warm conversation to a relaxed beat. Keep the home fires burning... and maybe some of that bittersweet will get smoked out. Or something. Now it's back home, and soon it's back to work. And, right now... that's okay.

And So This Is Christmas... And What Have You Done?

Christmas has been, like much this year, a little weird, but also somehow just right. I've felt quite "spirited", full of Chistmas cheer and joy, pretty much since Thanksgiving (and even a little before that, once we decorated the store). And yet, here we are, two days out... and we don't have a tree, and a lot of other work has yet to be done.

I'm pretty sure, without looking, that I mention my love of Christmas each year; it's a family tradition, it's my Swedish heritage, and it's the optimistic kid inside of me, all rolled up. Working in retail - which has been a pretty consistent thread of my adult working life - can really grind the Christmas spirit right out of you. Us salesgirls are a hardened lot. Yet somehow, as if on cue, I hear carols and see decorations, a little switch inside me gets switched on.

And it helps to remember what's really important about Christmas and the season. In our way, the people I know who are serious about a life in retail, kind of share this notion: Christmas is so not about the things and the shopping and the decorations in October. If you can't get beyond that, if Christmas doesn't live somewhere besides the mall... I think one is bound to be disappointed, at some point in life.

One of my customers has been on pins and needles, waiting to see if her County government job would be saved from massive budget cuts, and that her county subsidized living arrangement wouldn't also go away. Yesterday, we got the final good news: her job is secure, at least for now, and she took the big step of finding a new home and is now just settling in. It is, as they say, a Christmas miracle.

I'm afraid I'm something of a traditionalist when it comes to the calendar year; I see the year ending and the new year coming and somehow, this time of year is all endings and beginnings, sum-ups and fresh starts. It's kind of obvious, kind of cliche... yet that's the pattern I see, over and over. I get to December, and my mind just starts to take stock. And plan for the next start.

As I've said, in some ways this has been a very weird, very hard year - emotionally and economically tough, full of strange endings and fresh uncertainties. This year has also been a real test of just how thoroughly I can keep up with my self-assigned task of writing continually and consistently. But here I am, at the end of the year, and I find myself focused on what remains: the good that exists, the joys that highlght my daily routines, the love I have and can freely share. As much as I don't love Lennon's Christmas carol (and this year, I realized, for the first time... it's not Yoko's fault), I find myself, for once, appreciating his song and it's simple opening. So this is Christmas... I hope you had fun.

I did, and I will.

Here In The Real World

So... the last few days were spent mostly offline, out in the "real world." I'm more conscious, these days, of making the choice to step away from the onine sorld in favor of life lived in real time in real space. Working, doing things with friends and family, sleeping (a lot of sleeping)... these are my days.

It's not that I want to write less - I'm behind on movie reviews, for one thing - but the challenge of finding a balance doesn't get easier, and the sense that writing, at times, makes me put the rest of life, the real life, on hold hasn't had its usual appeal. Add to that the dismal state of blogs, especially politically motivated blogs, and the even more depressing state of politics in general... and the appeal of spending time with two very nice nephews just grows and grows.

The thing about life lived in real time, I find, is the way things are more immediate, more practical, more... well, real. Raking leaves, doing laundry, making a pie, serving coffee and cleaning my store... these things keep me grounded, my head focused on things that, in the end, probably matter most. The things we can actually do, the ways our lives can actual touch others, the problems that seem most immediate, most manageable, most solvable. 

So, here I sit while the plumbers install a new faucet in our kitchen - life is full of practical problems, these days - trying to get a little caught up. It's too cold, winter is upon us, I hate the early dying of the light, day after day. This has been, in so many ways, a strange year, full of unexpected twists and turns... only to wind up, here, with more of a sense that I am, in fact, doing okay, right where I need to be, focused (at least some of the time) on things that matter. If things keep eing this interesting, I could even learn to like this real world. At least some of the time.

But The Ending Kind Of Restores Your Faith In Humanity (#Snowtober!)

I'm sure karma had something to do with it, because I said, for two days, that this winter strom would turn out to be a dud.

After finishing my post yesterday, I got up from my table to get dressed for work. My mom said "big flakes!" and it was the first moment that I realized that the snow was stickiong and far more dramatic than I first thought.

Still, I set off for work; I know how to drive in snow, and where we were, things looked passable. And surely, plowing and salting were underway.

I knew I was in trouble when, one town over, I started to skid just trying to get up a minor incline. Major hills were in fact easier than mild grades. I called my boss to say the roads were looking bad, but we agreed I should still be on my way.

Then I turned onto Route 133, one of about 3 options I had to get from where I live to where I work. It's something of a country road, two lanes, rolling hills, but I figured since it was a major connecting point for the county, it must be  getting attention.

But it wasn't. It was pretty clear, right away, that we were in for trouble. Cars were packed onto the road, lots of spinning out, and trees, as predicted, were collapsing under the weight of the laready heavy snow.

I made it about half way towards work on this road when traffic just stopped. Using what judgement I could, I decided it was best to turn around and make it back to the side road I knew connected back to a mjor artery. I figured from there I had options to either try and get to work or head home.

And about 100 feet after turning around, I slid off the road into a ditch.

After the initial panic, I was surprisingly calm and sanguine about it. I mean, once you accept the reality of your situation, there's not much to do: here you are, and you're stuck. Unless someone pulls you out, you're not going anywhere.

And I wasn't going anywhere.

Four hours later, the magnitude of the disaster was apparent. Between listening to the news, and taking to drivers as they passed - slowly - it was clear that, across Westchester, this was really bad. Roads were unpassable. Trees down everywhere, Power outages all over.

And now, it was getting dark.

Something about the darkness simply froze my soul. I'd seen to many movies, heard too many stories. What if a tree fell? What fi power lines came down around me? It was clearly hours before help would come, if ever. And the fuel truck, which had slid off the road before me, just feet in front of me, had been pulled out. Now I was alone. The 4 other cars that had come off the road near me were all abandoned. No houses were really that close.

It was at that moment that a red truck pulled up, and yet another nice lady asked me if I was okay and if help was on the way. I said, more earfully than before, that I didn't know quite what to do. At which point she leaned over, and her husband leapt out from the driver side, grabbed a shovel, and dug out my tires. Then he got in front of me, and pushed the car as I tried to back out.

At first, we made a little progress, but the wheels started spinning. Then he dug around again, went back to the front, and pushed again. This time the car awkwardly lurched onto the road. I was free. Before I could even finish my heartfelt thanks, they were gone.

Driving back on 133 was an almost entirely unfamiliar landscape. Cars were abandoned everywhere, trees had fallen. I passed the remains of a burned out shell of a car, what I can only assume  resulted from a power line fall. Further on, a mail truck was jacknoifed going down a hill. I barely got around it.

I pulled into a gas station, called my mom, called my boss, and had a hot dog for dinner. I'd been trapped for four hours. And really, I was one of the lucky ones, getting dug out and able top ride to safety. I debated staying at the gas station. Eventually, abdout 45 minutes later, I decided to attempt the ride home the rest of the way. More downed trees, but the roads from here were in better shape.

In my own town, the power was completely out. Fire had broken out, burning down a local restaurant my mom and I had eaten at multiple times. They were barely letting cars through, but my house was on the near side of the fire trucks. I got home, hugged my mom, and sat in the dark. The wonderful, blessed, candle-lit dark of home.

Thirteen months ago, a tree fell on my car, and I survived. Yesterday, I spent four hours in a ditch in a blinding snowstorm. There's no punch line to this. No feeling of invincibility. Between those evnts I feel like a lot of clarity has fallen into my life - what matters, what doesn't, what it takes to survive and carry on. 

That and I've learned that we can survive best when we are there to help one another. I'm grateful to the kindness and decency of strangers. I always joke with my mother, at the end of especially sentimental films and TV shows, that they "kind of restoore your faith in humanity." This morning, my faith is thoroughly restored. And now, it's probably back to work.