The snow greeted us later than projected but we were ready. We are New Englanders, after all. A little snow never gets us down. Todays snow was called all sorts of names like Bomb Cyclone and the meteorologists  used words like thundersnow. I don't know what any of this means but I do know that it was deep, fluffy, windy and beautiful. It was annoying and frigid and relentless and then it was so quiet. Pebbles and I walked down our street at the very tail end when it is neighbors and awakenings all around. Lights were on, the next door neighbor was wasted from a day long of uninterrupted drinking and we were bleary eyed from too many episodes of Shameless, sleep and the types of conversations that you have on days like this.
Some years winter has bothered me. The darkness envelopes me calling me in to its long cold arms and telling me lies, in my own voice. Some years I have rallied around a few days of snow, the break, the cookies, the sleep and the snowball fights. But it has to be like just a perfect amount and with the immediate promise of some warmer weather soon.
The winter of 1994 was right around the time when drinks became more than social softening for me. That winter we had what felt like record levels of snow but I don't know if that's true or not and I was only 22 years old. I remember I had just walked out of the campus of Boston College and quit, just like that. And I remember that I had no job or maybe it was just a stupid little job I don't really remember and that didn't really mean anything to me at the time. And there was the relationship I was in at that time which centered on drinking and youth and missed opportunies. And that was the winter I kind of went crazy or maybe I got sane. Either way I got sober.
The winter of 2015 some probably say I lost my mind. It snowed so much that year that people used words like "Snowmagedden" and one day during maybe our fourth or fifth snow storm in a row the US Army dispatched the Nation Guard. It was the War on Snow in Gloucester. Every week, always on Mondays we had a major snow storm. There was so much snow up there people lost direction, gave up hope and just stopped shoveling.
I had given up hope a long time ago in a lot of things. Mostly my marriage. But I kept it locked away hidden in the house on the hill and somewhere beneath about 18 layers of snow gear. I had planned a trip to Costa Rica and that was going to be the solution to the snow problem and the marriage problem and my problem.
But it wasn't and it wasn't like the day I got back that I realized that. It was in the airport staring out the window at the airplane which was seated on a bed of ice and snow. People were celebrating their escape from New England and I couldn't breath.
Looking back on that year, three years later and on days like today I am reminded and I mind and then I remember that I can breath.  The weather is malleable like everything, so changing and evolving. The New England snow fall will make way for the longer days and the bulbs I planted in the fall will fill my yard in days to come. There is no place that I need to run to today because I am already here. Its hard to believe that that winter made way for the heat of the summer of 2015 where Jeremiah and I learned the back roads of Beverly on foot and bike and where I taught myself to cook in a tiny apartment the year I left everything in Gloucester and ran. With a clear slate and a clear mind I found piece by piece the life that I had wanted all along. It was right there under the layers of snow, just waiting for the sun and some water and time. Lots and lots of time.