Thursday, December 9, 2010

the ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in...

So I've survived the first great snow of the year, exiting a crowded bus to walk downtown past almost a mile of complete gridlock to catch the train home. I brushed about 6 inches of snow off the car, gave a lady at the stop a ride to the church on the way to Save-A-Lot, and was thankful for the delays because it gave me more time to prepare dinner for some friends.

People act like it's the end of the world when it starts to snow but these are the times when I love public transit the most, especially looking at how my car insurance jumped in the last year between a crash last year, 2 tickets, and living in a city where cars get stolen all the time. When it's icy and gridlocked, it's nice to have someone else driving so that I can be amused by the antics of high schooler and work my way through Patti Smith's "Just Kids."

But once the heat is turned up and the stereo on, the red novena candles are lit, and the kitchen smells like curry and cinnamon, and I'm surrounded with those I love, drinking tea and snacking on egg rolls, it's a beautiful thing. We talk and laugh and share our joys and sorrows and stresses, help each other get through the hard times.

We've had a lot of hard times these past few years, stressed about work or lack of it, family, friends, relationships, ourselves. It's so easy especially in our culture to get into these romantic notions of being a loner and struggling through by oneself, but we need each other way more than we'll ever admit to and more than we'll ever know.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

glad that you have some folks to commune with, we have endured almost 4ft of snow over several days and the cabin-fever has been kicking in but tomorrow we might get a bit of sun and maybe even break 30 before the looming artic air descends. stay toasty and dry!