Good morning from beautiful, snow covered Nashville where the temperature is 17 degrees. I looked out at the picnic table in the low dawning light, expecting to see a “light dusting,” but to my surprise there’s at least 6 inches of the white stuff and it’s still squalling. Luckily, the schools were closed for Martin Luther King Day and I’m pretty sure every other business has closed as well.
I don’t want to brag, but this is where the lines are drawn between northeners and southeners. When our kids were little, they’d rush to put on the whole kit and kaboodle – thermal underwear and snow suits complete with scarves, mittens and pom pom hats! Let’s not forget the snow boots. They couldn’t wait to make maple snow and build snow caves with their friends in the Berkshire Mountains. OTOH, I don’t even think our Grands own a sled, or ice skates let alone snow boots, and I know for sure they have never seen this much snow.
Sometimes I wonder if I was just imagining walking through tightly packed snow tunnels on the streets of Massachusetts. Did we really get Nor’easters with a couple of feet of snow on a regular basis? That time Bob’s car flipped over into a snow bank on the way to his hospital in Northampton, was that real or just part of a narrative I’ve told myself so many times? The Bride was sitting in her highchair and I was feeding her oatmeal when Bob walked back into the house covered in snow. I didn’t hear a car coming up the driveway; hadn’t he just left for work?
Cognitive dissonance isn’t enough to describe such a feeling but I’ll bet it’s imprinted on us for life. It’s what some patients describe after a dose of ketamine for a procedure – like they are there…but not there. Like the time we heard that Hillary lost the 2016 election. We had to ‘suspend our disbelief’ for the next 4 years, we had to get comfortable with chaos, followed by a tornado and a pandemic. It was a lot to ask, and some of us did better than others.
I thought we’d be talking about Iowa today, but the snow has cocooned us and dampened the GOP. I thought we might look back at the legacy of MLK, Jr, but memorials have been cancelled. When I heard that the principal of an Iowa school had succumbed to his injuries from a school shooter, I was ashamed that I barely remembered the massacre. But I do remember the Covenant School shooting here in Nashville.
When I saw that our own TN Democratic representatives, the Justins, were sanctioned and silenced in the State House because they wanted to talk about gun reform, I was infuriated. Now, Republican-led members have changed the rules for public entry to the people’s house. Getting a ticket to sit in the balcony now, unless you are a lobbyist, is harder than getting a seat at a Taylor Swift concert. That is their scheme; the pleas of Covenant parents to protect their children be damned. Someone once said, “Cruelty is their point” and I’m starting to believe that maliciousness runs in their veins.
As a card carrying Democrat, I was proud to be called a “snowflake.” And I’m just as proud to call myself a Yankee. We know how to deal with a little snow, and we know how to start an avalanche.
MountainMornings 