My close encounter with winter:

It’s snowing again in Boston. Again.

I know, I know. It’s kind of what’s expected right now, what with it being the darkest part of the year.

“January in the Northeast…would you expect anything less,” my friend Tracy quipped on Facebook, when I was complaining about how cold it's been.

Yet knowing something logically and processing it conceptually are two different things. This much snow and coldness has been hard for my brain, because it just runs counter to my entire view of the world.

For example, this past weekend I saw people out ice fishing…and my sister-in-law offered to take me walking across a frozen pond, just for the novelty of the experience.  Um, I know ice fishing exists, but my brain is convinced that ponds are for swimming in, not for walking across. I am not Jesus.

Back when I was in graduate school, I remember having my thesis reader, Dr. Bob Jensen talking about how much he missed shoveling show. This past week, I shoveled snow for the very first time in my life.  I’m beginning to think that Bob has some strange ideas.

On Saturday morning, I saw my brother-in-law Andrew chipping away at the giant ice dams on his roof, and cleaning some of the two foot of snow off of their roof. I had heard a rumor that icicles could actually get big enough that they’d really do some damage if they fell on you, but I’d certainly never seen such a thing!

In the last few days, I’ve also learned about something called a “snow farm.” Misleadingly, this isn’t where they grow snow. Rather it’s the place where old, sad unwanted snow is taken to die after it is scraped off the highways. I don’t know why they don’t call it a “snow morgue.” 

I‘ve also recently learned that my extended-family member Mary refers to snow days with her three-children-under-the-age-of-six as “booze and tranquillizer darts kind of day.”  I’ve already had a beer that the manufacturer named “cabin fever.”

Unfortunately, there is another TWO FEET of snow expected in Boson over the next couple of days. Today was supposed to be fine—with only a couple of inches—but it’s been so bad that some 300 flights have been cancelled out of Boston! The next couple of days are supposed to double the amount of snow of the ground in Boston. Frankly, seeing the weather reports, I can’t help but think of Lizzie Bordon, in Fall River, Mass., and wondering if she did her family in during a long New England winter. (Actually, Google tells me that those notorious murders happened in August.)

Mary also made a brilliant reference to “The Shining” …about the family who is snowed in for the winter in the creepy hotel.

Given the empirical evidence at hand—and all over the ground-- this means that for the preservation of my mental health, I’ve decided to flee greater Boston (and the certainty of being snowed in with my in-laws for days) for the charms of NYC and my cousin’s apartment in Brooklyn. Besides, it’s always good to have another adult to entertain a Brooklyn toddler, yes?

PS: Also, the guy next to me on the train is wearing old –school overshoes that he just zipped over his dress shoes. I never knew those existed outside the movies.