An occasional drip from the kitchen ceiling punctuates my breakfast; steady splats from the dining room ceiling accompany my bill paying; sporadic plops from my studio ceiling interrupt my drawing. I'm living in a thawing state of emergency. Three blizzards and a couple of storms brought us a record 100" of snow, which is starting to melt. One drip at a time, massive amounts of melting snow produce some of the most spectacular icicles I've ever seen. Some of them are on the front of our house where our front door is currently frozen shut. Almost all of our windows have icicles, inside and out, and are frozen closed until spring.
It feels like we're under siege. We're shut inside because the roads are treacherous and the sub zero temperatures are life threatening. Snow reaches halfway up the house, windows are covered with snow drifts and doors are iced shut more securely than any lock. Inside, the house feels increasingly out of control. Towels and buckets collect drips; stains spread, paint blisters and drywall bubbles on the ceilings; the rugs are rolled up and furniture moved out of the way of water damage. Feels like the ongoing forces of entropy and destruction are at work. And as much as I long for winter to end, I know the spring thaw will inevitably bring not only mud but flooding. Our basement has always thought it was a tributary of the Charles River and floods periodically. We have an industrial strength sump pump, plus a back up, and last year we need both but had only a fraction of the snow we have this year. Ominous.
I can hear two different crews shoveling my neighbors' roofs - both whacking away at the ice dams with huge mallets. I have to run some errands. Backing out of our driveway these days means inching along, lights on, very slowly since there is no possibility of seeing anything from either side with snow piles that are taller than the street signs. Made it! Didn't hit anything or anyone. I went to the bank and there on the counter sat a bucket catching drips. I went to the grocery store and a couple of firemen were inspecting the ceiling over the bananas I was about to buy while another team of firemen used a massive extension ladder to get to the roof of the building to shovel off the snow. When I went to a doctor's appointment, everyone I talked to - receptionist, nurses, doctor - has either a burst pipe or dripping ceilings. We all have gigantic snow piles, snow covered roofs and driveways that are basically tunnels. We all have our snow sagas.
But I no longer feel like I'm in a personal disaster zone; I'm participating in an ongoing weather event happening to everyone. It's interesting that so many places have broken weather records this year: hottest, coldest, wettest, driest, most snowfall, most rain. Global climate change couldn't possibly have anything to do with any of this, could it?
