Just when I’d started to believe winter might quietly slip out the back door, a classic nor’easter has RSVP’d for Sunday night on the North Shore. Classic, of course, is winter’s way of saying, “You know this is going to be a whole thing.”
Heavy snow, dramatic wind, and the comforting knowledge that whatever plans you had will now involve a shovel.
I hate shoveling. Not in a casual, “oh, this is inconvenient” way.
I hate it in a soul-level way. Shoveling is the only activity where time slows down, snow multiplies while you’re not looking, and your driveway somehow gets longer with every pass.
You begin with optimism, this won’t be so bad, and end forty-five minutes later questioning your life choices, your fitness level, and whether moving somewhere with palm trees is still an option.
And it’s never just the driveway. There’s also the car. Somehow, I only ever have to clean snow off my car when I’m already late.
Never on a relaxed morning with nowhere to be. No, it’s always when I’ve calculated — down to the minute — that I can leave right now and arrive just in time.
That’s when I step outside and discover my car has been transformed into a compact, aerodynamic snowbank.
The windshield alone takes ten minutes, during which my scraper inevitably disappears, my gloves get soaked, and my coffee cools to a point where I just might as well go to Dunkin anyways.
Naturally, this storm also lines up with the big Patriots football game. I’m told it’s important. Very important. Monumentally important.
I don’t actually watch football, but I absorb its importance through tone alone — radio hosts, neighbors, and strangers at the grocery store all speaking with a kind of reverence usually reserved for national holidays.
While others are tracking stats and matchups, I’ll be tracking whether the plow has come yet and bracing myself for the icy wall it leaves at the end of the driveway.
And yet, here’s the thing: we live in New England. This should not be surprising. Snowstorms are part of the contract.
We complain loudly about them while owning multiple shovels, at least one snow brush that’s missing half its bristles, and strong opinions about meteorologists who are somehow both always wrong and uncannily accurate. We act shocked every single winter when winter behaves exactly like winter.
By Monday morning, the game will be over, the storm will have moved on, and I’ll be outside once again, shoveling, scraping, and muttering things that are not fit for print.
I’ll wave politely at neighbors doing the same thing, united in shared misery and quiet pride that we’re handling it, again.
And later, when spring finally comes, I’ll almost miss winter.
Almost.
