Snowbound

Who would have imagined — the third heaviest snowfall in our city’s history descended on us Wednesday here in Charleston from a mighty Atlantic storm whipping up the Eastern seaboard. An unrelenting period of weather below freezing has kept the snow and ice around. A week of very cold weather and 5 inches of snow — we never have this. It’s very weird and unusual.  In fact, I don’t think this has ever happened here.

That afternoon the snow started coming down, first a few flurries, then heavier and heavier snow until the shrubs and ground were covered. It was magical and beautiful watching it. It’s so rare here that you can’t believe your senses. But snow it was — soft, wet, fluffy and cold. The landscape was transformed in a period of less than an hour, the snow was so heavy.

Mom was mesmerized. She kept looking out the large windows in the den. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said again and again. It was indeed an entrancing scene outside, and when it stopped around 5 there was that stillness and quiet that comes with new fallen snow. How sweet to observe the world at peace — no loud motorcycles, cars or trucks. When I stepped out on the porch, I could hear the delighted, happy sounds of children. If we adults are so bedazzled by falling snow, imagine the giddy excitement of children who perhaps have never seen it before. This is the coast of South Carolina. It “NEVER” snows here, remember.

But behind this highly unusual spectacle was the unsettling fact that it was a just plain weird weather occurrence. It all seems to be another byproduct of this scary thing called global warming and climate change, at least the severity of it. Think back to the horrible hurricane season just past. Now low temperature records have been falling all across the eastern half of the country. I can’t even imagine single digits and below zero temperatures.

So the heavy snowfall here, while beautiful, was yet another reminder that we’re really starting to pay the price for our decades-long reliance on fossil fuels and our lack of will and foresight to have dramatically started changing our carbon habit way of life decades ago. I remember in grade school and high school being astonished that cars could pollute the air so freely and that there were so many smokestacks belching pollution. Things changed starting with the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts in the early seventies, but now those laws are in danger.

People are getting out and about driving and trying to get back to some semblance of normal life. Fortunately for the most part Mom has had a relatively good period as far as her dementia. She slept all day one day but was talking and asking questions over and over yesterday. The hardest part of it all was just being stuck inside. By the end of day two cabin fever was really setting in and I was getting a cold which I haven’t had in several years at least.

None of our five caregivers could come until last night, and that was a totally unexpected blessing.
I heard a knock on the door about 6:30. I couldn’t imagine who it could be. It was one of our caregivers, the newest one we hired. She told me she had been thinking I might need help with Mom and a break from everything after three days of no help. I really was overjoyed and thanked her profusely. I hadn’t been able to get a shower for days, so that was the first thing I did. Then I relaxed in bed, reading and checking things on the Internet on my phone. What a relief to have a three-hour break. And she had already worked another job earlier in the day. I really can’t be away from Mom for more than a few minutes if no one is here. Who says there aren’t angels among us?