Old Man & Winter

We've had so much snow this winter, it has begun to remind me of my time as a boy growing up around Boston. But even in that colder past, I only recall two or three winters that packed this many punches. I've felt like I sometimes have when I'm overmatched by an opponent and the best I can hope is to hold it together long enough to live to tell about it.

This last week left the latest layer of snow, a good fifteen more inches. We're running out of places to put it all. At least half of our parking spaces on the street are now occupied by 7 foot tall piles of snow.

"Reminds me of Boston," I said to a neighbor and fellow expatriate of our fair city. We were shoveling our adjacent cars out of deep snow drifts and trying to find a place to put the snow.

"Yeah," he said, smiling and added in true Boston fashion, "It's wicked snowy this winter."

Then, forgetting that he was a bit younger than me, I added, "Reminds me of the storm of '78."

His face just went into blank wonderment, and it was a good ten seconds of silence before I realized he might not have been born for that one.

"Or the winter of '92," I said trying to recover.

"Yeah," he said, "I remember school being closed a lot that year."

"School!" I thought to myself, "Oh boy. I was in school in '92, but I was teaching."

We chatted a few more minutes and finished our shoveling. It was amicable, but I felt a little embarrassed.

Everyone has one of those moments when you know you've crossed another of the many thresholds of age. And even though I know I'm still young by many standards, this was one of those moments that made my progress through time feel rougher than normal.

I've looked at that snow out there a little differently this week; I've been thinking how my father was younger in 1978 than I am now in 2011 and the future that I had always imagined so far away as a boy is now upon me like the layers and layers of snow that sit just outside my door.

Winter makes you feel old I've heard people say. I think personally it's time for a little early spring - I'm ready for some younger thoughts.

Good night.