Blind inFlight

The biggest presence in my life right now is snow. This is old news, and uneventful news for most of the country, but it’s been snowing in Seattle for the last couple of weeks. I’ve barely left my apartment except to hunker down in other people’s homes. My neighborhood is a huge shellack of heavy, continuously freezing and thawing slush. I know this sounds extreme, but the truth is, several times I have caught myself confused about where I am in the universe. I feel like I’ve gone back to Minnesota winter in a dizzying swoop. I feel the malaise sink in, the dread of the next several months of trudging through this half-water, half-ice nature dump. I feel the anxiety of life unlived, appointments canceled, obligations unmet, because the minutia of travel is just too difficult. The feeling is low-grade suffocating.

Two very wonderful, snow-related feelings have also surfaced. During the first snow storm of three, (depending on which weather forecast you look at), I experienced overwhelming childlike wonder and peace. I went outside with my dog and tromped around the back parking lot of my building. I baked a cake and made soup. I drank warm things like they were a life line. I conjured snow days of my past. I didn’t feel guilty for doing nothing for two days, and I only felt a bit stir-crazy.

As the stir-craziness became less easy to ignore, the other wonderful realization occurred. I was able to re-remind myself of why I moved from Minneapolis in the first place. Besides simply wanting a new adventure, I moved because I no longer wanted to be inhibited by snow for months on end. There are a lot of ways my life is inhibited, and I was no longer interested in snow and ice and cold being on that list. That particular inhibition was something I could control, and while it pained me to leave behind all the things and people I adore in the Midwest, living in a place with (almost) no snow has been very freeing for me. I know I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in my life, but this is one decision I’ve made that I am happy with, and I was able to see that reenforced during this atypically snowy Seattle February.

Hopefully, this will only be an every-few-years thing, and I can continue having a much improved, more appreciative relationship with snow. As for right now, though, I’m over it. It’s time for Seattle to melt.