A snow storm, of all banal things, forced me to cancel a recent trip to New York City, putting a real dent in my plans to spend part of the holidays in New York City.
"I need to go there," I said over the phone to the woman at Delta the night before my scheduled flight, which had been very quietly canceled. "I need to be in that place."
"Delta can't control the weather," said the woman.
"No one told me the flight was canceled," I said. At that point the blizzard was still no more than a bad rumor, like Monica Lewinsky or the real estate bubble, and I wasn't ready to give up.
"Many flights were canceled," said the woman, helpfully. "We didn't know we would have to cancel them until we had to cancel them."
This is why you are called Delta, I thought. You make people want to change -- airlines.
But the next day, I opened up the New York Times online to find a horrifying slideshow of the buried city. It was like the sky had taken a giant white bowel movement, and, not knowing where to aim, simply hit everything.
There was a picture of a bus stalled in the middle of a street; a snow plow driver digging out his snow plow with a shovel; a woman crawling on her hands and knees up a white slope that had once been the steps of a subway station. I refreshed the webpage throughout the rest of the day to see if the woman had moved a little further up the stairs. She had not.
This gave me pause. There are elements of city savvy that anyone who has lived in a city will pick up without too much trouble. Things like: Carry a decoy wallet. Pack a spare umbrella. When wearing flip flops, avoid the gutter. When using mace, don't stand downwind.
But looking at the subway lady, frozen forever on screen and underground, I whispered a prayer of gratitude to Delta for keeping me from New York. Because gutters I can handle. Even grates cannot slow me down. But against snow -- that much snow -- I would not have stood a chance.
And so it was New York City, of all impractical things, that scared me into learning how to ski.
*
Two days later, I found myself dangling above a mountain. I had somehow ended up on a lift with two small children, a brother and sister, both of whom seemed unfazed by my presence between them.
"Snape, Snape," chanted the girl as the lift ascended. "Severus Snape."
"Dumbledore," said her brother.
"Snape. Snape. Se-ver-us Snape."
I looked down at my feet, trapped in their little prisons. It is strange to be far above everything and yet realize you are in too deep.
"Dumbledore!" cried the boy. "Dumble--"
"Snape!" said the girl, cutting him off, and now she was shouting. "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape! Snape, Snape, Severus Snape!"
"Hermione," said the boy softly.
Meanwhile, I was still focused on not dying. Forgive my ignorance, but I am going to venture that ski lifts are a perverse contraption. They are like dry cleaning conveyors for humans. Placing yourself on them is a remarkable act of faith -- yes, right up there with walking around hotel rooms barefoot -- given how many permutations of mishaps they can accommodate, a subset of which involve the word plummeting.
When we reached the top, I wanted to bid my new friends goodbye, but they were gone in a matter of seconds, two M&Ms carving down the slope.
"Snape," I said, wishing they would wait for me.
How quickly the tables turn. Day to day, you can wake up and celebrate being almost an adult, almost self-aware, almost a functioning member of society. But try something new and you begin to wish you had no concept of what you might lose. At that moment, alone at the top, I envied those kids for their nonsensical songs, for their low centers of gravity, for their bodies without selves. I have eaten grapefruits larger than the girl's head.
There was nothing left to do but fall down a mountain, so off I went.
And it was actually alright. There were a few moments when I felt like the woman stuck in the New York subway. But I got up. And I never felt like the bus stuck on the New York street, which made me proud.
So the next time a blizzard and I both decide to visit the city, I'll be ready. Even if I still can't ski, at least I won't be scared of the snow. And if you think about it, no matter how high the powder manages to pile, the only thing that really plummets in New York is stocks. And that, for once, is a comforting thought.
