If it weren’t for COVID, we’d be changing our routines for the weather: last week’s ice, this week’s expected days’-long snow and freezing drizzle and more snow and frigid temperatures that will keep everything from melting down to a clear driveway any time soon.
All of this was good for almost an hour’s conversation on the weekly Zoom chat with byo coffee.
“What I had to do to get chains on the truck and tow the car up to the top of the driveway to park it on the county road.” [!!] This leads to comparing the length and grade and composition of driveways – asphalt vs. cement vs. gravel – and strategies for coping with them. [None are as good as not having the ice and snow in the first place.]
“Whether our daughter will be able to get her car out of the ditch, and whether it would make more sense for her to spend the next week at our house. Here’s a picture.” [Yes, your house sounds like the best option to us!]
“All ice is bad.” [This from the person I think of as the winter weather stoic. They used to live in Nebraska, where weather worse than some of us will ever see was routine. Brrr.]
Weather conversation like this is not really about the weather. The weather is just the pretext.
The heart of the conversation is how things are with the people who are living through the weather: whether everyone is warm and well; whether anyone needs anything, like a hand, or ice melt, or a ride to the grocery store.
They’re really sayin’ ‘I love you.’
Bob Thiele & George David Weiss
Image: “Winter landscape,” Georges Buysse, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 