Homesick
Our old apartment in NY was on the eighth floor at the rear of the building. It was not a "view" apartment, but (due to the fact that the Bigass Apartment Building Down the Block had bought up the airspace rights for the two lots immediately behind it in order to build up, and was therefore enjoined from building anything on the lots behind our building) we had a fifty block view. There was something really magical about looking down from our South-facing windows to see the roofs of the brownstones and the trees on 94th Street dusted and laced with snow, the cars buried in snow, the 50-block view hazed and softened with snow. It was always fun to slog along the two blocks between our house and Central Park, find a hill and slide down it (with or without the kids) and watch my urban neighbors get boggled by the fact that Nature has happend to them (you know what turkeys do in the rain? New Yorkers are similar in snowstorms: mouths open, looking upward, astonished). If I didn't feel like dealing with the cold, stay in, drink hot chocolate, and look out that window.
There are 22.8 inches of snow in Central Park today. I miss my view.
Sigh.
There are 22.8 inches of snow in Central Park today. I miss my view.
Sigh.
posted by Madeleine Robins at 9:29 AM
4 Comments:
Yeah, I'd like that view, too. I have a beautiful view of trees and snow. However, I also just came back from Trader Joe's with a trunkload of groceries and the police were forcing motorists on the interstate to go to one lane and follow a police car because so many people were doing unintentional doughnuts.
And the big dog has snowy feet when she comes in. She instantly leaps onto the couch and chews the snow out of her paws, soaking the comforter which is protecting the new couch from, well, snowy dogs. The conforter is doing its job, but it's always damp and no fun to sit on.
But it is pretty, now that we're home.
I really love New York in the snow, because I can generally walk anywhere I need to get to, and anyway the whole city just goes wha? in a most entertaining way. I don't love snow so much in the Berkshires, where there are better coping mechanisms in place (no one is stunned into insensibility by snow) but you have to deal with the damned stuff yourself. I particularly don't love trying to drive up the driveway (which is steep and windy and just loves to skid cars off onto the lawn) or walk through the windy halls on my way to a working fireplace. Snow is pretty in New York, where I can choose my battles. Snow still pretty, but less amiable, in the Berkshires. Of course, snow nonexistent in San Francisco.
Do they have a snow day tomorrow? Do you have to send Da Kid off with snowshoes?
I always loved snow, precisely because the snowy places I lived in were also always places where I could walk where I needed to be. That does make a huge difference.
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