It looks like snow

by Diane
Central Park in the snow

Or maybe I’m just indulging in wishful thinking.

Of course snow causes all kinds of trouble…but I wish I were in New York right now. Or rather, that I was there as the heavy stuff started to fall, and the city went silent. It’s one of the few times you get to hear NY that way (or not hear it).

Peter and I were incredibly lucky a few years ago to be there for one of those magic nights/mornings. We had flown in just before Thanksgiving, and the night we arrived, the snow began. We had crashed for a little while after arriving, jet lag being what it is… but we woke up about two in the morning to find that about two inches of snow had already fallen, and it was coming down harder every moment. We got ourselves sorted out and spent the whole rest of the night walking the streets, enjoying it…stopping into this or that all-night place for a Little Something every now and then (Big Nick’s at Broadway and 77th being one of the best of these. Okay, so it’s not strictly an all-night place…they close for an hour, I think between 3 and 4 AM. Big deal). Shortly after dawn we were in Central Park playing in the snow with everybody’s dogs, making snow angels and otherwise acting like eight-year-olds.

Heaven. I was so glad P. had had a chance to see the city that way, the streets empty or nearly so — the only sound being the occasional jing-jing-jing of the chains on a snowplow as it passed. And the next morning, of course, people cross-country skiing up Fifth Avenue…

We have had the occasional blizzard here, but not nearly enough of them for my taste. During the last one we were distracted from taking endless pictures of it because we were about to head off to Switzerland on business: the thought that snow at home might prevent us from getting to Zurich was a little too much irony for me to appreciate. However, it all sorted itself out — we dug a hole through the four-foot drift that had piled itself across the road in front of the house, and the taxi got to us eventually. And in Zurich (where it was raining) they listened to the story in disbelief. “Snow? In Ireland? It snows in Ireland? We thought it was always green there…”

Yeah, well. Let’s see what it does today. It’s cold enough, and the clouds have that threatening, slightly torn-up-at-the-edges look…. Maybe. Maybe.

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