S'no Snow

Apparently there is a snow storm heading our way.  Excitable types on Facebook are using the word "blizzard."  Someone said their friend was scheduled to travel tomorrow evening, but their flight was already cancelled.  I looked out the window, but I don't see any snow.  Yet?

The Firm just sent around its standard "Weather Advisory" email, instructing us on how to handle any changes to normal office operations that may occur as a result of said storm/blizzard.  Co-workers are asking, "Are you ready for the snow?"  I smile and say something benign like, "I hope so!" but really I'm thinking, "WHAT SNOW!?"

When it comes to snow, I refuse to get my hopes up.  I'll believe it when I see it. 

Could this be because I have so little faith in meteorologists, having been lied to many times before when it comes to weather?

Is it because I grew up in an area where we don't get much snow, where the threat of a little white stuff throws people into a panic, where local news reports of impending storms are given dooms-day weight, and where we stock up on milk, bread and toilet paper until the store shelves are bare, and then - inevitably - wake to find streets dry and clear, and trudge off to school/work after all?

Am I just conditioned to be disappointed by snow?  By it not showing up when I want it to, or expect it to?

Or is this a deeper hope issue (should I even go there?) and does my believe-it-when-I-see-it attitude extend beyond precipitation?  Am I so afraid of disappointment that I've given up hoping entirely - for the big things and the little things, alike?

Nah.  Let's blame it on lying meteorologists and leave it at that.


Postscript, 1/12/11: We got some snow, but not a lot and certainly not a blizzard.  I was right!!  However, there is little joy in that right-ness, because I'm writing this from a cubicle in midtown rather than a snow fort in Central Park.

My Own New Year's Eve
December Photo Project Day #29

Bergdorf Goodman Fairy Lights

As tomorrow is my birthday, tonight is the eve of a new year for me.

So....Happy New Year!

I hope it will be.

Like Paul Harvey Used to Say...

A head cold arrived on Friday afternoon, just in time for the weekend. It was insistent on sticking around; not even my patented OJ-whiskey-ginger ale cold-fighting cocktail could keep it at bay. And so I spent this lovely (or so I hear) autumn weekend inside, intermittently napping, drinking juice, and watching old episodes of 30 Rock on Netflix (God bless Netflix). I cancelled fun plans and had to table all the trip preparations that needed doing. I just sat, weak and sniffling, living vicariously in Tina Fey’s version of New York.

Some Days


Some days, when you are busy and focused on other things, you feel ok with this stage of life. You paint it with colored words like “exciting” and “audacious” and “full of possibilities.” On those days, being alone is not “lonely” - it’s “beautiful” and “romantic” (in a wistful, emo-drama, Emily Dickinson kind of way). You do a-ok.

But some days, that perspective gets lost and being alone just hurts. It’s ugly, and it’s hard to accept, hard to sit with, wishing (as you do) that there was something that could just be done about it. It all feels impossible, or at least improbable. You think about addicts going through withdrawal and wonder if that’s in any (small) way like what you feel now – creepy-crawly skin and an inability to sit still.

Luckily, these days are not the majority of your some days. And when they arrive – unwelcomed – you keep busy until you run out of busyness. Then you grab a paperback novel and some sunglasses. You go and sit on a bench by the river and you pretend to read, but really you’re just breathing. In and out, repeat.

Your mind races and you dabble in bad theology, wondering why God has it out for you. You cry a little; that’s what the sun glasses are for. You hope the passing roller-bladers and bicyclists don’t notice your trickling tears. They don’t. (Listen, girly: Think you’re the first person ever to sit on a bench by the river, shedding sorrow? Nope.)

And so you sit, and sit, and sit. And you breathe your way back to an even keel. And this is how you pass the afternoon, because sometimes the only thing to be done is to pass time. And time will pass. And bad theology will recess. And anxiety fades. And eventually you pick yourself and that paperback novel up off the bench and start walking.

That’s just how some days go.

(Hypothetically speaking.)


Hope in the Heat of It

Upper West Side at Dusk

“Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” - Mignon McLaughlin

A few weeks ago, back in August (remember August?), I headed from Hebrew class to the grocery store, dragging my text books with me. I bought some food for the week and started on my six-block walk home. I was heavy-laden, between the books and the groceries, and the night air was hot, humid, unmoving.

Now, if I haven’t already made this clear here, I hate being hot. I hate humidity and I hate sweating. As such, summer is my “angry season.” But that night, trudging home from the store, I found that I wasn't as annoyed by the heat as I am normally.

Sure, my initial thought upon exiting the air-conditioned store was "Ugh! Hot!" but that was quickly followed by "Well, whaddya gonna do?” The week before, temperatures had been unseasonably cool. I knew September was right around the corner. Summer’s days were numbered and the heat was on its way out.

That foretaste of coolness, coupled with the fact that summer does indeed have an end (proven by 32 years of past experience) and that end was near, made the night heat easier to bear. It wasn’t that I was less hot than I had been back in, say, July. I just had hope that the heat was fleeting, and that made the experience more agreeable. The heat felt more like a blanket to snuggle up in, rather than an oppressive force to fight against.

It got me thinking about hope, and about how it’s easier to have hope in some areas of life than in others. Hope for the end of summer was a cheap kind of hope, because I already had glimpses that it was near and a sure knowledge that it would arrive as it always does. That hope made it easier to be patient with the current season, because I knew a new season was right around the corner.

But what about other areas of my life? How do I weather those (metaphorical) seasons, when I’m not sure of their duration or outcome?

Sometimes I beat myself up for not having more hope for these uncertain areas, but there’s no need for that. For one thing, I doubt self-chastisement very often produces hope. Mostly it just produces guilt. And also – hope can just be plain hard sometimes. It’s good to cut myself some slack and realize that.

So when it comes to hope – that “feeling [I] have that the feeling [I] have isn’t permanent” – I’m trying to remember that, in the absence of signs and sure-fire timetables, when the end is not so clearly in sight, to ask Someone else to help me on the hope front. And trust that He’ll answer, as He’s answered me before.

The H- Word

West End Ave.

I was restless last night.

Didn’t know what to do with myself.

It was hot, but not unbearably so, and I decided to go for a walk, hoping to exhaust myself so that I could fall asleep quickly and be done with the day.

I headed north on Columbus Ave, passing groups of slow-moving friends, walking three abreast. Sidewalk cafes were still full of diners eating late dinners. A dog smiled at me (I swear he did!) as I passed him and his owner around 86th Street.

I kept walking. I kept thinking: about books I’ve read recently, movies I’ve watched, conversations I’ve had with friends. The theme that keeps arising is HOPE. And how I’m pretty short of that elusive substance. Confused by it, burned by it, done with it. Over it.

And how maybe that’s not really an ok way to be – over it. How maybe (as hard as it is, as confusing as it is) I’m called to have HOPE, and my refusal to HOPE is some kind of disobedience.

The sidewalk crowds were thinning out. I had walked far enough north. As I crossed Broadway to loop back home, I tried to convince God why I couldn’t do it – couldn’t HOPE. “I’m wounded, I’m bruised, I’m beat up,” I told Him.

“I have wounds, too,” I felt Him say. And you can’t much argue with that.

Still, this HOPE thing doesn’t come easy. I can’t just scrounge it up, can’t buy a carton of it at the bodega, can’t fake my way through it, can’t strong-will it into being in my life. Even if I wanted to. And I don’t. Not really. Not yet.

Here’s what I can do – here’s all I can do – here’s all that I have the strength to do at this point: I can be open to letting God produce this elusive HOPE in my life. I can let Him be the change that I want to see in my world. I can let Him effect the change that needs to happen in my heart, in regards to this dreaded HOPE business.

I can put it and leave it in His hands. And maybe that’s what He wanted all along.