wideeyedfunk

Tag: winter in Buffalo

  • Darkest January.

    The long haul is here. The days are cold, too cold and windy for good dog walks, gardening, anything really. The nights are frigid, too frigid for standing in awe of the starry universe. The short hours of daylight, and don’t try to convince yourself otherwise, yes the days are getting longer but they are still short – the short hours of daylight pass interminably in the dark gleam of overcast skies and no end in sight.

    The house creaks and bangs in the shifts from cold to exceedingly cold. I can hear my neighbor’s back door slam in the hyperlucid air. The dogs bark each time. Shivering a little at my observation post at the window, I think dark thoughts about wearing their warm furs as a cloak. That would stop the barking.

    Sirens blast through the city more or less constantly. January is the season of emergencies. Fires burn hotter, car accidents shatter windshields and bones more spectacularly, the cold makes the emergency greater, the response itself dangerous.

    The WideEyedSpouse and I have inhabited Northern Cities by chance and happenstance for thirteen of our twenty years of marriage. None have bested the grim, dark, endurance trial that is Buffalo for sheer misery. The windows of abandoned houses and factories stare into the darkling days and pink-light nights. Heatless, roofless, they are havens for the desperately poor. The dreams of a new generation of city-builders are lost under heaps and mounds of poorly plowed snow, rock salt encrustations, and the skittering drifts of wind-blown trash. Hundred thousand dollar Mercedes purr warmly past layered heaps of used clothes that are people waiting for buses. The contrasts are starker without the greenling veneer of temperate spring and summer, or golden fall.

    Maybe it’s me.

    Maybe tomorrow I should strap on my Wisconsin-bought ice skates, don my Minnesota-cold furry hat and glide in circles on the new canal-side rink. Maybe I should make snow angels, feed and water some hungry birds. Maybe on the gloomiest and coldest of days I should make donations to the heating assistance fund, the electricity assistance fund, the food cupboard and hope that I’ve helped others get through.

    Maybe I should rejoice in the long quiet that is a Northern City Winter and find peace.

    We’ll see.

  • “You married a winner.”

    The rain is lashing down on the ice and slush and the temps are standing just above freezing. Hamish the Corgi went belly deep into greasy puddles on the walkies. Miss Tibbit the Useless fastidiously danced along the margins of the sidewalk lakes. She was clearly disgusted. The WideEyedSpouse and I were disgusted. It is disgusting out there.

    The Mighty Pathfinder hauled us and our rattling, quivered arrows and bow cases to the conservation society for archery league. Nothing good was on the radio, advertisements on most every station but the preacher man’s. It’s just a little too apocalyptic to listen to talk about a savior when we’re hurtling through traffic at light speeds in a big truck. So the flip flip flip of the wipers counterpointed the every changing melodies of bad songs and local radio ads as the Spouse rolled through the stations.

    We skittered across the glaciered parking lot of the conservation society clubhouse and thumped our boots on the snow mats before throwing open the door. It was warm and bright and dry inside and full of the league members setting up bows, belting on quivers. “Hey now,” I half yelled into the room. “Hey!” came back at us.

    PinI always set my recurve up faster than the Spouse, my gear is simpler and I guess I don’t have the eye for precision. He was tightening a sight screw and I was putzing with my stuff when Paul C., our league leader, swooped into our table space. He was holding a little manila envelope to the Spouse, “Congratulations,” he smiled. The Spouse is inherently suspicious. He didn’t take the envelope straight away. “For what?” he asked, peering out from under his Lancaster Archery Supply hat. “You won your class on one of the Sunday shoots,” Paul held the envelope closer. Matt took it, opened it, looked at the cool little winner pin. “Looks like you married a winner,” Diane said to me from the sign in counter.

    Heh. That cracked me up.

    DeerHeadFrontSo we shot our arrows. More or less ok for both of us. The Spouse’s pin gleamed on his quiver. The deer heads in the corner patiently displayed the conservation society tshirts for sale. And the rain lashed down outside. I was in the end lane against the wall and I could see it out there through the window: cold, wet, ugly.

    The Spouse’s team beat my team tonight, but near the end my shooting improved. The weather didn’t and we scrambled through the rain to the Pathfinder, from the Pathfinder to the back door, and now the WideEyedHousehold is huddled on the sofa safe from the day. And you know, I married a winner. We have a quiver pin to prove it.