The Winter of Our Discontent

All the snow has almost melted. You can tell I don’t live in the Boston area because their snow is never going to melt. But here in South Carolina, it’s almost all gone. Staring out the window, I watch the small patch in the yard grow ever smaller as I listen to the trickle of the melted snow gurgle down the gutters. And you know, I don’t really care. We were supposed to get a school closing four to seven inches. We ended up with a measly inch and a half of wet slushy snow and temperatures well above freezing. I bet your kids are disappointed, aren't they?

Snow days aren’t like they were when my kids were little. I remember us getting all excited and having a serious plan about how to tackle a snow day. We made sure we had hot cocoa and movies and popcorn and board games or puzzles. We would be up and out the door by eight at the latest to tromp around in the yard, making pathetic lumpy snowmen or dragging the kids around in a laundry basket with a jump rope looped through the handle. We would stay outside until our fingers and toes burned from the cold wetness, then come inside and unbundle, hanging all the wet things on a drying rack my husband would set up by the door. If we were lucky, there would be a nap, but if not, there was always that movie to provide some down time before a second round of outdoor play would begin.

We don’t get significant amounts of snow where we live so we never invested in a good sled. We did break down and get a plastic snow disc, which was perfect for the gentle slope of the driveway and even the less than gentle hill near our neighbor’s house. We broke it last year, and none of us remembered that we needed to replace it.

Why is that? Well, now that our kids are officially teenagers, they don’t really care so much about rushing outside to play in the snow. One of my daughters spent the night at a friend’s house, while the other one slept in so long that the snow was all slush by the time she even opened her bedroom door. She decided that starting her homework was more important than going outside to look at puddles of melted snow. She also decided that staying in the same sweatpants she slept in sounded better than bundling up and getting wet. She did have a cup of hot cocoa, but truthfully, she didn’t earn it. I didn’t even offer to make her snow cream. And as quickly as the snow melted, so did the mild excitement, as the reality of another school day loomed on the horizon. Mostly, she felt cheated out of an extra-long weekend.

I made turkey chili in the crock pot. I did some laundry. I read a little of my book. It wasn’t even noon yet and I finished all the things I had planned to do.

My husband debated about opening his office while he played on his laptop, iPad, and phone simultaneously. In the background, the television blared the jarring sounds of CNBC. We all silently thanked the power for staying on, praised the internet for functioning, blessed our neighbors for not hogging the bandwidth.

Here is a conversation that we just had:

Me, walking into the family room: Whoa, did you fart?

My husband: No, I didn’t fart.

Me: It smells horrible in here. Are you sure you didn’t fart?

My husband: I would know if I farted, and I didn't. Maybe you farted.

Me: How could I have farted? I was upstairs folding laundry.

My husband: Well, I didn’t fart.

Me, silent judgment.

My husband: It’s probably the chili.

I only mention this conversation because my daughter, who was upstairs in her room doing her homework, yelled at us for arguing about who farted.


This is what happens when a family sits inside all day and doesn’t venture out to play in the snow.

Only one of us made it outside to stick a foot in the melting snow, and it was the indoor cat. We have a tradition of tossing her in the yard. It is for her own enrichment and does not warrant a call to Animal Control. I like to think of her as Puxatawney Phil. If she runs back in the house, we will have six more weeks of winter. And if she just doesn’t care for the snow, then spring is just around the corner. As usual, she hated it and us for continuing this senseless tradition.

 

If you still have young kids who like to play in the snow, be sure to join them. Have fun. I can’t very well go outside alone and play in the snow because that would be weird. My kids would make a vine of me and post it on their Instagram page, and my neighbors would drive by and wonder, yet again I’m sure, about the status of my mental health. It just isn't fun by myself.

I hate to be one of those moms who tells other moms to enjoy that time with their young kids because it is so fleeting. It’s true, but I refuse to say it. My teens would rather go back to bed or go out to Target than go in the yard. No one wants to snuggle up and watch a movie. They rather hide in their rooms and play on their phones. And in a few years, they will be at college playing drinking games or some other such inappropriate activity, and I will be lonely and worried about slipping and breaking a bone.

And seriously, we are all just ready for spring.

(Pod)Casting Doubt

Our family friend, SS, came to town over the holidays. We love it when SS is in town for a while. We get coffee and hang out and catch up on each other’s lives or interests or just what’s new. It is always a good time with SS.

What’s new in SS’s world is an obsession with podcasts. Podcasts have been around years, but it seems just recently that SS has decided to devote all of his free time to the very diverse world of podcasts, even foregoing music in the pursuit of always listening to a tale or a tidbit voiced by someone who knows much more about something that I ever will.

I was kind of surprised about it, to be honest, because SS was always someone like me when it came to music. No matter how old the two of us get, we still try to stay current with new music. He attended concerts like a promoter, not a casual fan, always discovering some new artist before the mainstream did.

Now he doesn’t know any of them. We drove to get coffee together, and not only did he not recognize any of the songs on my playlist, he didn’t even recognize the band names. That has never happened in the over quarter century of our friendship.

“What the hell has happened to you? Who are you? What are you even listening to?” I asked him.

“Podcasts. That’s where it’s at," he said.

Rather than judge him too harshly for his choices, I felt I should at least give a listen. I decided to go with Serial, a twelve part podcast that was a spinoff from This American Life, is a staple on public radio. Serial, hosted by Sarah Koenig, is an exceptionally popular podcast that was number one on iTunes before it was even released. The first season, which ended in December, examined a murder trial from 1999 to see if the evidence warranted the guilty verdict in that case.

Spoiler alert: There is no spoiler alert. I am not going to spoil it for you. Listen to it if you haven’t or if you want to. What do I care? You waste plenty of time on less interesting things. You know you do.

From the first episode, I was hooked. Sarah Koenig’s mesmerizing voice, the level of detail, the constant struggle with being objective. It was the kind of investigative reporting from days gone by, when a reporter could really delve into the facts and examine them and present them. She had a whole team to devote to the task of scrutinizing testimony and evidence, and with every episode, she would speak about it, sounding like she was speaking to only me.

I listened to Serial the way most people watch Netflix or eat Oreos, one big binge. I started carrying ear buds with me so I could continue an episode while I ran errands. I began to drive with my glove box open, plugging my iPhone directly into the USB port in my car so I listen to it through the speakers.  I turned it on while I soaked in the bathtub, and turned it up extra loud so I could hear it over my sonic toothbrush as I got ready for bed in the evening.

I wondered, was this kid guilty? Was he wrongly convicted? Reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt as far as the ear could hear. I would think of a question, and then next episode, bam! Sarah would ask it. It was so validating. I was critically thinking in a way that reality television shows like Honey Boo Boo and Gypsy Sisters never seem to challenge me to do.

As soon as I couldn't live without Serial, I finished it. Season one was over. Twelve episodes might seem like a lot, but not when I listened to them during the many hours I spend driving my kids around in the car. I texted SS, desperate for a replacement to fill the podcast void my life now had. He texted me a few ideas, but so far, none of them sucked me in the way Serial did.

And then, one night while waiting for my daughters to finish their showers, I sat down to check my email, turning on the television for background noise. Dateline NBC was on, and Lester Holt was laying out the case for that evening’s episode. As I listened to his voice, I realized that the Serial podcast is just a longer and cooler version of a regular old true crime television show.

The case they covered could have been the same one from Serial, a murder, a convicted killer maintaining his innocence, a sense of disbelief, some jury members that weren’t entirely comfortable with the decision or the sentencing. It was the same damn thing, and man, was I disappointed. I had spent a good twelve hours of my time and what limited brain function I had left to a podcast that was in essence no better than an episode of Dateline, which really is just a half step up from Judge Judy. My disillusionment was profound.

The next day, I went back to listening to music.