The last time Pittsburgh experienced a snowmageddon, Sarah was 3. She is 19 now, so perhaps I can forgive the city for not being able to handle a foot of snow. It is a very hilly city and almost half of the plows broke after their first big night of work. It was also extremely cold all week with windchills in the negative numbers. The upshot of this was a week of the girls being home from school, meaning a happy Amy and a sad Sarah. Amy loves her school, but also relishes being able to sleep in and have extra time for her schoolwork while getting time to play in the snow with her bestie. Sarah was supposed to have a special Catholic Schools Week experience where each day had a different dress-down theme. She was very upset to miss her jobs at school, the days out of uniform, and getting to ride with her beloved bus driver. After the first day of big tears she did settle in to acceptance. Luckily her school also decided to grant us the last three days as pure snow days with no work required.
The snow gifted me an experience of compassion for what stress Sarah might undergo when attempting some school work, specifically around counting coins. She gets so stressed that it is clear she is no longer capable of thinking things through even with help. My good-girl-who-does-her-work self wanted to keep pushing our way through, until I faced my own version of her stress. One day I went outside and saw a frozen, half-disemboweled bird on top of one of our huge snow hills. I told Carl he could deal with it on a break from his work, but then thought I should just deal with it myself because he had a day of non-stop meetings, and I had time. I tried. I had my latex gloves, my plastic bags, and a garbage bag ready to accept the carcass. I tried three times, getting close, willing myself to just do it, and I absolutely could not do it. Every cell in my being was rebelling. I realized that if that is what Sarah felt upon viewing the math problems, there is no way I would ask her to proceed. The math may be easy for others, just as Carl had no problem dealing with the bird, but for Sarah and me there is no way we can handle our frozen disemboweled math poultry on hill.
Carl and the girls had a good time sledding on the main sledding hill and clambering over the immense hills in our front yard, formed from our shoveling efforts. Luckily we thought to clear our cars and shovel around them as the snow fell so that when a plow eventually came to our road we didn’t get shut in by the icy wall of compact snow that made it even harder for all other cars everywhere to get out. Every day we continued shoveling to help neighbors and reclaim the roads. I love getting exercise when I feel like I am truly accomplishing something helpful and I wish I could think of an equivalent to shoveling snow that I can do once things melt. I also wish everyone knew that when you clear snow from around your car you should not put it in the street, on the sidewalk, or in between your car and the next car. You have to get it into a yard or someplace where it won’t continue to be an obstacle.
We celebrated Sarah’s birthday again, culminating with her birthday bash sleepover with Anna and Amy. This time Sarah helped with decorating the cake and it looked like a party with an explosion of sprinkles and candles. One of the presents I got her was a hoodie with her school’s logo embroidered on it. She loves it. She loves it so much that as she opened her other presents and cards she kept pausing to trace the logo. Later in the day Amy gave her the present she made: a beautiful watercolor of Sarah and Granddad as color buddies in their matching Peanuts shirts. Sarah loves it and even had attention for it rather than returning to the logo.
May you have someone who can support you by easily dealing with whatever you cannot possibly manage.
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