A gray patch of playground slush in kindergarten. That's the closest I ever came to snow before settling here. As I got older, the East Bay grew dryer. There were times I stopped and counted on one or two hands how many days it'd rained in a year. Near the end of my California period there was a scramble to buy masks too, as the state government issued air quality warnings due to record-breaking wildfires. With one advancing toward us, trees in Castro Valley were cut down. Every season a fire season. From "climate change" to "climate collapse." So it's with the shock and pleasure of a former resident of a parched and burning state that I think of snow, of the earth being well fed, of powdered branches against a mauve sky. But it's not all cheerful visions of fertility and hitting my nephew with a snowball or two. I've gone from knowing nothing of snow to battling snow. And I've learned firsthand that there's no winning, only enduring. If one can.
A respite: snow piled everywhere but the sun out. With snow coming down, blanketing everything, and keeping customers away, I have a reason to stay home from the snakepit I call work. With the sun out and the roads clear, however, I figure I should obey my oath to the store and try to make it, despite the obstacles. Bloomingdale is not very friendly to the pedestrian on the most tranquil of spring days. When snowplows clear the roads, the snow is pushed onto what few walking paths and sidewalks there are, creating frangible walls to scale. The alternative is to walk or jog carefully in a two-lane road, trying to avoid ice, cars on your back that can't be counted on for patience.
Rounding a corner, a woman snug in her SUV seemed to be enjoying my situation. But I made it onto the less busy road uphill that I walk most of the way without a scratch. Traffic tends to come downhill. I walk on the other side of the road and switch as necessary. Once, I stepped onto a driveway to let a car pass and nearly slipped on ice, then nearly slipped stepping off. Further on, two cars came each way at the same time. I stepped onto a sturdier snow wall and waited. This leg of my trip was about typical. The trickiest came after, upon reaching the freeway in Riverdale. More lanes means more snow pushed onto the path, the wall looming over the waist-high steel barrier fixed along half of it. And it is a very sooty wall. The only choice I had other than spending ten minutes plowing neckdeep through bonechilling filth before work was to
And I got to work right on time, with no serious injuries. I stepped into an empty part of the parking lot to put on two masks and started for the entrance, tensing up.
Since I last mentioned the coronavirus, signs have appeared throughout the store informing everyone of how to properly wear a mask. It is a clear, if cartoonish and undemanding, visual, a gentle, infantilizing message to adults to please do the bare minimum to protect themselves and others from the contagious and potentially fatal illness that has killed scores of people, wrecked the economy, and upended life in our country and beyond for about a year. My day begins with an inessential coworker lumbering directly toward me wearing his mask incorrectly, as usual, in a narrow space. I turned around and waited in a safe corner for him to pass.
Anything you have to say about taking it easy with this whole coronavirus thing is going to be idiotic. Not so long ago, I stood away from another coworker who can't be bothered to wear a mask properly or keep apart from others. Irritated, he asked me how long I was going to distance myself. I recited the latest numbers within the US alone: the millions infected, the hundreds of thousands dead. I added that it seemed like a problem worth taking seriously to me. He went on to air his view, with absolutely no encouragement from me, that what we ought to be doing is taking off our masks and infecting ourselves to build our immunity.
The vaccine has arrived long before the most optimistic predictions but the US has bungled the rollout too. What's more, it appears people who work at grocery stores, for instance, among the most exposed and underpaid for their trouble, are at the back of the line to receive it. Another reason to remain vigilant, the sensible person would conclude. What one gets instead are coworkers who share breakroom tables without wearing masks. Customers, meanwhile, are as much of a problem as ever. I may very well be the only person in the store at any given time that makes an effort to keep a distance, as frequently instructed.
Convincing explanations have been provided for such behavior but it's not likely to change any time soon. The point is that I never considered staying indoors for winter at work if I could help it, the most dangerous season for the spread of the virus. But my oasis is covered in snow. I tried to run up the steep hill on the edge of the parking lot to get there, promptly slipped, landed on all fours, and slid right back to where I started. A car honked. Every potential outdoor place to sit alone, in safety, is covered in snow. My solution: Guide a grocery cart to the side of the store, where there's a lone salted road used mainly for deliveries, overturn the cart and sit on it. I missed the quiet and solitude of the forest and kicked around the idea of bringing a shovel to work. Somehow in my relatively obscure winter spot, in a fifteen- to thirty-minute window, a few maskless strangers, customers apparently just wandering around the perimeter of the store, have appeared and come too close. And a truck passing through to spray salt sprayed me too. The driver looked to be on his cell phone.
After my shift, worn down from another day spent parrying as much as working, I escaped into the night. In hand was a box for laundry detergent in which I carried a box of disposable masks, a box of reuseable masks, and a box of mini Drum Sticks. My ride didn't arrive. "Cool," I said. The temperature would at least preserve my Drum Sticks on the long walk back home. Starting down the road, a car honked. It was not my brother.
I scaled the filthsnow wall. Not so bad at first. It'd melted and frozen and it maintained structural integrity initially. And it was too dark to be grossed out. Then, halfway across, as I came under a street lamp, illuminated and highly visible from the parking lot, a leg sank fully into the snow, followed by the other. I tried to stand and my arm sank. My box toppled and my glasses came off. I reached out and got poked grasping a prickly branch. Eventually I fought my way to a stable portion of the wall. I snatched off my masks, wiped down my glasses, and made sure my products were safe in my box. I thought of a good snowstorm scene in an Icelandic novel I otherwise didn't care for. Stranded, on an icy rock soon to come apart beneath my feet. If I ever wanted to get home, my only other choice was to
And somehow I made it. That's what's important. Near the start of my downhill trek, in the dark, I had a runny nose. I didn't have a tissue so I blew my nose into the palm of my glove and wiped my face on the knuckles as best as I could. No one saw and yet I had another reason to get home: to feel less feral.
Back near the busy two-lane road, I scaled the wall, stepping where others had. All went okay until, under maximum illumination beneath the street lamp, as cars sped by, I slipped into the snow pathetically, with no resistance, just an ugh. Getting to my feet, slowly, I thought: Tired. Hungry. Sick? Home.
I balled up my gloves, hid them in my pocket, put on a mask, and walked in with my usual: "Yo." Civilized human once more. And alive.
