Snow day offers a rare respite from non-stop pandemic worries

 
Friday’s snowstorm (Jan. 7), which dumped up to a foot on parts of Massachusetts and about 8 inches in North Attleboro, offered a rare pause from the non-stop pandemic news, which has gotten to be too much for even those of us who have been fully vaccinated and boostered against the coronavirus.
The brief return to the “old normal” began the night before. That’s when the season’s first legitimate snowstorm prompted the local nightly news to talk about something other than the pandemic right off the top. The snowy forecast instead led the TV stations to rev up their storm-watching machines to tell us over and over that --- mirabile dictu --- it was going to snow in January, and you had better be prepared.
And prepare the viewers did, going to the store to stock up on bread, milk, peanut butter and other staples, and going to hardware stores to scoop up shovels. (The latter has always amused me, because given that it’s winter in Massachusetts, it’s a safe bet that it will eventually get cold enough to snow in January, requiring you to have several shovels and car snow brushes on hand, so why would you ever wait for the day before the first storm to buy a snow shovel?)
But the best thing about the snowstorm was how neighbors helped each other out, proving yet again that people extending kindnesses to each other can still make a big difference in the quality of our lives.
We were the beneficiary of the generosity from our neighbors on Friday afternoon. After being outside for two hours --- including walking/jogging on our cul-de-sac for about 45 minutes --- shoveling my walk, cleaning off our cars and removing the snow that the plow had  dumped in front of me and my neighbor’s mail boxes, I went inside to warm up and shower.
My wife picked up where I left off, and several minutes later, I heard the dog barking and when I looked out the window, I saw two of our neighbors from several houses down and one of their sons busily shoveling our sloped driveway along with my wife. I had planned on going back out later to tackle the driveway, and was pleasantly surprised --- and touched –- to see my neighbors shoveling our driveway despite the fact that they had their own driveway to do, too. While out for a walk, they saw my wife shoveling and promptly returned with shovels to pitch in.
 Unfortunately, feeling human is the most glaring aspect of our day-to-day existence that the pandemic --- with all of its talk about  hospitalizations, cases, deaths, testing, masking up and keeping our bloody distance from everyone --- has taken from us.
Our psyches have become scarred by the never-ending pandemic to the point where we've become perpetually emotionally drained. So it was real nice that, thanks to the snowstorm, we were able to rediscover how good it feels when people’s giving nature makes you feel better about life.
Such moments of people reaching out to each other are what makes what French writer André Malraux called “La Condition Humaine” or “The Human Condition” not only bearable and tolerable, but a beautiful thing.

Thank you, dear neighbors, for doing that during these trying, frustrating, and occasionally, sad and depressing times.