Today's "Feel the Love" Score for New York remains low because I have still not enjoyed my first New York snow. As a sad substitute for the real thing, I watched Sex and the City repeats over the weekend (while healing the ol' back). I saw one of my favorites, the episode called "Splat," which features a New York snow storm as central to the series transition to its conclusion: Carrie was moving to Paris, Miranda to Brooklyn, and Samantha into a relationship. Further illustrating the end of the era in this episode, New York's 1980's "It" girl, Lexi, falls out of a window to her death after declaring to the party that she was "so bored she could die."
The friends' time together was coming to a close, and the storyline reflected that in the quiet progression of beautiful scenes of a snow-covered Central Park, blanketed cars, and the stillness of the frozen avenues.
Truth is, I have always been a winter guy. I prefer the cold and the snow to the heat and the beach. I find joy in the Fall when the wind whips around your face, whispering of the coming chill. I like the snow, the way it makes even ugly streets (at least momentarily) beautiful and changes the appearance of everything it covers. I always liked The Snow Miser more than the ubiquitous Mr Heat Miser.
Maybe it was because it was so unusual to have snow growing up in Alabama. Maybe it was because all those thick sweaters hid all that shameful baby fat I struggled with as a kid much better than a swimsuit. Or, maybe one's preference for winter versus summer is just born in you.
I think it was the way snow always created a buzz, made even the adults smile, and drew my family into the house for warm fires, hot chocolate, and vanilla snow ice ("Don't gather the yellow snow" my Mom always warned).
I have been thinking a lot about snow recently. I think it is because my chronic back issues have flared up again. When I had my back surgery a few years back, the neurosurgeon came to the conclusion that at least part of my problems started with a back injury after sledding as a child. While sledding during one of the few Alabama blizzards of my childhood, I rolled off a speeding toboggan to avoid a steep incline, only to meet a rather stubborn pine tree with my lumbar region. It knocked the wind out of me, and apparently knocked a few discs just far enough out of alignment to culminate in some nasty back problems 15 years later.
Nonetheless, I don't blame the snow (Don't worry, Mom, I don't blame you, either. Although she refused to take me to the doctor before sending me back to school, I think I deserved the medical neglect because I faked illnesses to avoid school pretty often as a kid).
I still love the snow, and I am impatiently waiting for my first big one in the City. I do have an upcoming ski trip to placate me. Nonetheless, I cannot wait to see snow blanket New York City for my first time. Everyone says it turns ugly here quickly, and that I will eat these words later. I know what horrible things snow can do to a person, or a city. But until that first transitional moment, that first New York snow, I am like a kid in Alabama again, watching the weather, cursing the let-down of "wintry mixes" and "near misses," and waiting.... for that first Big Snow.
