Snow Away!

When I was a child, every February I wanted snow on my birthday. I wanted to play in it and get a day off from school.

Flash forward many decades and here I am in Morris Plains, a homeowner, watching my 11th - I think it's the 11th, I've lost count - snowstorm of the season and I am wondering where the water from about two feet of piled-up snow on my lawn will go when at some point it starts to melt.

Yes, I am thinking ahead. Looking out the window right now is depressing.

The front and back walkways are trenches next to the piled-up snow. The drifts are so frozen I can stand on them and not sink in. The squirrels have discovered they are two feet closer to the bird feeders and have improved their jumping skills.

The snow has gotten very old very fast.

My husband, a proud weather geek, reminds me this is not the most snow we've ever had on our property. That record is held by the January 1996 nor'easter that dumped 30 inches of snow on us. But that was just one storm. This year, with all the storms, we're not that far from breaking that record.

The closest thing to the continual pounding of snow we've seen this winter was our first winter here, the winter of 1993-94. At that point we had snow followed by sleet followed by snow followed by rain followed by snow. We couldn't catch a break and when the melting started I was walking in ankle-deep water to the train to work.

Now, two decades on, I am not bothering to walk outside except to refill the feeders for the birds or shoo the squirrels away from them. There is ice on the driveway, ice on the roads, ice in the parking lots and ice on the sidewalks. A fall could split open my skull. Healing takes longer now, as I've discovered from the aches and pains after shoveling varying amounts of snow and ice.

I am holding to the idea that at some point - such as mid-summer when the temperature is in the high-90s with 80% humidity - I am going to look at my browning lawn and try to visualize when all this snow was on it.

It is going to seem like a bad dream.