Day 615, March 9, 2022

Just Keep Swimming 

A March storm, similar to one 23 years ago, and similar to one 27 years ago. The roads are slippery and sidewalks un-shoveled. It is like we forget about winter, and what ensues is madness. Too many cars sliding off the road, ineffective plows pacing the highways, and pedestrians stepping out into the evening with little warning. Most of the way home I am stuck in a line of cars following a cautious tractor trailer and it is good. It keeps us all at a sedate and stately pace. It slows our racing minds, our accelerating hearts. Eventually, two towns later, the truck pulls over and lets us pass. After two cars turn off towards Montague Center, I am now leading the caravan and try to check my speed. My road is coming up and I turn on the blinker early, start to slow at the mailbox before the street sign. As a teen, I practiced careening down the snow covered driveway in the family station wagon, eventually perfecting the fishtail glide so well that I slid into the boulders lining the flower garden. I’m more cautious now, my street unplowed, and deep with a quiet smoothness. The snow is deep enough that the undercarriage of my car skims little corrugations into the surface. I take the turn slow and smooth, not touching the brake, letting inertia guide the gas pedal until I drift to the end of the driveway. I shut off the car and it is quiet all around me, the headlights illuminating the woods and the shed. There is a ticking and the sound of vacuum pumps, and then nothing, and if one stayed there long enough, a weighty blanket would press down and blot out even the night.