Weather Words

Rin-ng! The telephone woke me up this morning. I saw it was our son, Jamie, calling from Houston. “Mom, how cold is it there?” he asked, concern in his voice.

“Pretty cold, it was 16 below when I called the time and temperature in the night!”

“Well, I just heard it is minus 26 up there!” he exclaimed. Oh, my! That is scary, I thought. I told him we were alright, with heat and running water. My husband had turned the heat on an hour or so before, so it wasn’t even that chilly in the house. He sounded relieved and hung up with the admonition to “Be safe, and don’t go outside!”

We were about to venture outside yesterday, when I saw our son, Greg, parked in our street, and Adam, our grandson, wielding a snow shovel in our driveway, as if clearing a path for his dad to drive in. Howard and I went out and called for them to come up. No easy task, wading through nearly two feet of snow, but before long we were all outside, and Adam was sending clouds of the billowy white stuff into the air as he cut a path (canyon) for us from our porch to the drive.

How beautiful! The pristine, glistening snow lay like a heavy blanket of seven-minute icing on a cake landscape. It seemed a shame to mar it, but fluffs of it were sticking up like fresh-cut frosting wherever a boot or shovel had sunk into it. This was fun! There was something almost euphoric about experiencing the fluffy, glittering diamond dust, feather light and sparkling all around us. We laughed like children in the bright sun and still weather.

Howard suggested hot chocolate, but Adam, thirsty from shoveling, wanted a coke. “Hop in Mom,” Greg said, “We’ll drive down and get him a coke.” Hesitantly I got in, and we took off down our sloping street through the lightly trafficked, semi-packed snow. Oops, the truck was slipping as we turned into deeper snow to go up a hill. Greg reversed and backed up to get a better go at it, but we only slid further to the opposite curb, stuck in the slippery drift.

Merrily, the guys got into the spirit of digging out the truck, putting makeshift traction under the wheels, but about that time another truck with 4-wheel drive pulled up, hooked a towing tether to the bumper, and they were out! After all that exertion, our boys went home, and Howard and I set out to explore, returning home with no problems, only seeing others being dug out and rescued along the way. Thankfully, the weather is supposed to be springlike tomorrow. Oklahoma is living up to its slogan, “If you don’t like the weather, stick around awhile.” I only hope the snow doesn’t!