After nearly a week of impenetrable, nuclear winter complete with clear, frigidly empty skies and subzero, polar temparatures (and a positively suicidal windchill), heavy snows moved over the city. The storm bouyed the temperature into the low thirties and slobbered all over the sidewalks, while most New Yorkers took our very first breath in days.
After struggling back uptown in less than waterproof boots, at last I am free to settle into my weekly New York sunday afternoon-slash-holiday weekend, routine - rout through my refridgerator for anything that looks like less than a complete biohazard upon ingestion, put off washing my towels on the premises that the weather would most likely make the laundry room overcrowded and treacherous, and begin my weekly attempt to organize my life. The snow is that light, wet and incessant kind out my window - and it looks beautiful against the red brick of the surrounding apartment buildings.
I now ask myself -surely you do not plan to spend the entire day inside like a complete waste of life, now do you? There are errands to be run, money to be spent, caloriese to be burned and a never ending arsenal of housewares to be bought (Its amazing how, in a relatively small apartment that you rarely inhabit in favor of a multitude of other activities, you seem to always be in need of more and more housewares. How do you fit them, when do you use them and where do they go once you buy them? And why is it that every single weekend you are on another desparate hunt for a toilet brush and another cleaning apparatus? For now, this must remain a mystery.) Not having roused any response at all to this self questioning, I identify the top three reasons why I should leave the apartment ...and promtly prepare to dispute each one.
1) You really should get a run in, lest your few endorphins stay huddled in the pit of your pituitary gland and your breakfast go straight to your ass.
2) You really must return the too-large trashbags you bought two weeks ago at the Duane Reade on 23rd and 3rd. Two avenues, $5.99. You do the math.
3) Since I already know you wont listen to my sound advice on reason number one, why dont you simply slip on down to the grocery store and pick up some pillsbury oven-bake sugar cookies for dinner on a snowy night?
My timely rebutal to all these very rational reasons were as follows:
1) The running paths will be putrid, the sun will be down in an hour (it takes me half that to cover every inch of skin with running gear) and there's nothing that ruins a holiday afternoon more than spandex. Endorphins are for wussies anyway.
2) 2 avenues, $5.99...arctic blizzard. Its a wash. Couple that with the collagen I'll loose prematurely from my lips and you are looking at a lifelong bad investment.
3) Thats the best suggestion I've heard all week. But do I know yet after 6 months how to use the oven in my apartment?
Ladies and gentlemen, have you reached a verdict. Yes, Mrs. chairman we have. In the matter of January New York Blizzard #2 versus Miss Kate "aka Lazy Ass" Harris, we rule in favor of the defendent. Going outside on this snowy day, would be exceedingly unwise and completely unneccsary, not to mention potentially hazardous to self and society at large. Case closed.
On this thickeningly snowy day, the citys windows have turned to spots of glow as the sun sets unseen over the island of Manhattan. Shipwrecked as I am in my apartment on such a day with two fellow sailor roomates and a fourth in the whine of the TV, I'm checking all the email that I havent opened in weeks. Many of these messages I like to think of as "post-leukemia mail" - letters from the home front. As the east coast family representative I get a large number of these emails as a part of the remote supporters email distribution list - alongside college roomates and extended family. I always recieve them with a considerable amount of emotion - like a wounded soldier getting letters from his squadrom mates from the heat of the front lines. And my emotions walk that same kind of line from out here on Martini Metropolis Island - flooded by the violence of those leukemia memories from just two months ago, guilty that the distance leaves my family tribe one less member strong...but silly with relief and puffed up with pride when I get to watch his progress from a distance through those email distributions. The emails together that make up the newest best seller from the western front - How my brother got his life back.
The first of these emails I open is from my lovely mother about my sister's birthday party and my aunts weekend visit, slow to open and heavy with picture attachements. Drowsily opening the attachments, I come upon the last picture - and I dump my peanut butter and honey sandwhich all over my pajama bottoms on my way out of the chair. Rushing to see what is the matter, my roomate is shoveling her laptop and afternoon snack out of her lap to respond to my shrieks, expecting to find some kind of epileptic siezure, a masked intruder or perhaps even that charcoal grey Marc by Marc Jacobs shift dress listed for 75% off. By the time she makes it to my bedroom door, however, all she finds is my unrecognizable form stooping over a teetering laptop dripping tears all over a keyboard that would be more than a little expensive to replace and laughing like an absolute lunatic. Im waving toward the picture on the screen in some kind of attempted explanation, alternating hands to point while the other is holding the tears out of my mouth. Baffled, she's searching the picture of my brother and Aunt smiling in the winter sun on my parent's front porch, desparately scanning for something out of the ordinary. Nearly a minute goes by and I cant stop laughing with all kinds of emotional liquids clogging up my ability to express my self properly. Finally I make my way to the floor, rubbing my eyes like a 5 year old, watching the snow sift through the skyline and shore up the weekend in the cogs and ruts of of the city.
"Good God above, Kate, what!!??"
Im pointing to the picture, like a lottery winner to the winning number on the screen.
"Eyebrows. He has eyebrows. Look at them. The color of his skin, look at it. And..." sniff sniff, "He has sideburns!!! Imagine that! Sideburns!"
Who was it that said.. its the little things in life.
Its clear to me now more than it ever has been. No Fate or God or living person...not even your dream... can give you a life. And they certainly cant give your life back to you. But they can give you a second chance. It doesnt matter where the chance comes from. What matters is only that you have the guts to take it.
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