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No Consolation
Feb. 19th, 2010 07:57 amEver since that afternoon in late summer, when my grandson and I watched the rusted, algae-covered buoys being hauled ashore at Verona Beach for the season, we've both been thinking about the day when we'd see them again, tethered and afloat, on Oneida Lake.
This winter, in Central New York, has been unremarkable for the amount of snowfall we've received, either cumulatively or from any single storm. Until recently, I'd been able to keep open a narrow walking path around the nearby high school track. And it's only been in the past week that the accumulation on the picnic table behind our house has exceeded a foot in depth. Which is nothing special in a town where the record annual snowfall stands at 193 inches.
Still, by mid-February, the perception that this has been a long, dreary winter has had ample time to build, like so much blown and drifted snow, between the walls and across the walkways of the collective subconscious.
"Poppa," the little boy would say.
"What?" I would query.
"Don't you wish it was summer so we could go to the beach again?" he would ask.
"Yes," I would answer, "I think those days were the best I've ever had."
"Yeah, me too," he would say.
Which probably says something about the way we manage to survive, those of us who live about a quarter of our lives under the winter-darkened skies of the northeast. We do it by remembering those warm and pleasant days of seasons past and by promising ourselves, and each other, that there are more of them ahead. Which is what the little boy and I have done, with increasing frequency over the past few weeks.
For myself, there's also been a sense of other things concurrent with these conversations. For instance, there's a feeling I've gotten every time I'm on a highway that heads northeast out of the city. A feeling that, in some way not yet clear, another circle is irrevocably closing, that something, within reach of my feelings but beyond my control, is finding its way toward an inevitable conclusion.
It is, perhaps, a question of existance brought into focus by the extension of my own life into its sixth decade and my father's recent passing. It is a question of history, both personal and communal, discernable to those who have both length of years and awareness of legacy.
And then, against the backdrop of these existential meanderings, came whispers of a political snowstorm of potentially epic proportions. I was scanning the news out of our dysfunctional state capital the other day, when I learned that our visually-challenged governor is considering the closure of a number of state parks as a gesture at fiscal responsibility in the face of a massive budget shortfall. It was also said that, although a final decision is yet to be made, a number of those parks would likely be in the Central New York region.
I haven't mentioned this to the little boy and likely won't unless and until it becomes clear that the burden of this supposedly shared sacrifice is to fall upon us and our shared aspiration for one more memorable summer.
Still, even if it does not, some of us will live with the understanding that someone, somewhere, another grandfather and his grandson or a single mother and her daughter, maybe, will feel their lives diminished by this means, will know with painful certainty that something has been taken from them for which the balancing of a budget in a far away place will bring no consolation...
LPK
LiveJournal
2.19.2010
This winter, in Central New York, has been unremarkable for the amount of snowfall we've received, either cumulatively or from any single storm. Until recently, I'd been able to keep open a narrow walking path around the nearby high school track. And it's only been in the past week that the accumulation on the picnic table behind our house has exceeded a foot in depth. Which is nothing special in a town where the record annual snowfall stands at 193 inches.
Still, by mid-February, the perception that this has been a long, dreary winter has had ample time to build, like so much blown and drifted snow, between the walls and across the walkways of the collective subconscious.
"Poppa," the little boy would say.
"What?" I would query.
"Don't you wish it was summer so we could go to the beach again?" he would ask.
"Yes," I would answer, "I think those days were the best I've ever had."
"Yeah, me too," he would say.
Which probably says something about the way we manage to survive, those of us who live about a quarter of our lives under the winter-darkened skies of the northeast. We do it by remembering those warm and pleasant days of seasons past and by promising ourselves, and each other, that there are more of them ahead. Which is what the little boy and I have done, with increasing frequency over the past few weeks.
For myself, there's also been a sense of other things concurrent with these conversations. For instance, there's a feeling I've gotten every time I'm on a highway that heads northeast out of the city. A feeling that, in some way not yet clear, another circle is irrevocably closing, that something, within reach of my feelings but beyond my control, is finding its way toward an inevitable conclusion.
It is, perhaps, a question of existance brought into focus by the extension of my own life into its sixth decade and my father's recent passing. It is a question of history, both personal and communal, discernable to those who have both length of years and awareness of legacy.
And then, against the backdrop of these existential meanderings, came whispers of a political snowstorm of potentially epic proportions. I was scanning the news out of our dysfunctional state capital the other day, when I learned that our visually-challenged governor is considering the closure of a number of state parks as a gesture at fiscal responsibility in the face of a massive budget shortfall. It was also said that, although a final decision is yet to be made, a number of those parks would likely be in the Central New York region.
I haven't mentioned this to the little boy and likely won't unless and until it becomes clear that the burden of this supposedly shared sacrifice is to fall upon us and our shared aspiration for one more memorable summer.
Still, even if it does not, some of us will live with the understanding that someone, somewhere, another grandfather and his grandson or a single mother and her daughter, maybe, will feel their lives diminished by this means, will know with painful certainty that something has been taken from them for which the balancing of a budget in a far away place will bring no consolation...
LPK
LiveJournal
2.19.2010
