How Do You Describe Snow?
It could be a blizzard tonight.
There are four people in the small hardware store besides the owner and his young assistant: an older Middle Eastern man in a loose white shirt and jaunty plaid pork pie hat, me in a spotted jersey dress, and a dad (jeans) and his teenage son (baggy shorts) in the back by the plumbing supplies. There’s a larger hardware store about six blocks away, but the owner is Hasidic and it’s closed from Friday noon to midday Sunday. I’m in there at least once a week, usually three times. I know where everything is, and the staff enjoys helping me out with the weird projects I need their help with. This smaller store opened up in the spring and has Saturday and Sunday hours, although it’s locked for an hour on Friday afternoon so the owner can attend prayers at the mosque down the street. I’m gradually getting to know the owner who seems to tolerate solving my various handywoman problems. I asked once where he was from and he said Yemen. He and his family arrived soon after the war broke out and settled in with relatives who had already established businesses of their own nearby.
The older man and I come to the cash register from the paint aisle, he with a quart can of Rust-Oleum navy-blue paint and me a small jar of spackle for the many holes in my walls.
He’s first at the register, and as the owner rings up his purchase, he says, “There will be six inches of snow tonight.” His fingers pantomime snowflakes drifting down from the hardware store’s ceiling.
The owner counts out his change and replies, “I don’t think so.”
“What is snow?” his assistant asks. He looks to be around 19 and pretty ashamed he doesn’t have a clue what is supposed to drift from the store’s ceiling.
“You don’t know snow?” asks the older man.
The assistant shakes his head.
“It’s white,” the owner says very gently.
Maybe the young man is a relative visiting for the summer. How would he know about snow?
“No, it will. I heard it on the news,” the older man insists and looks back at me for confirmation.
Clues to what a stranger is thinking are very hard to come by, but he’s smiling, so I figure it’s a joke and I usually go along with a joke so long as it’s harmless. This one sounds more of a light jesting. Also, considering the weird summer weather all over the world, isn’t it possible that the current 95 degrees that feels like 100 could quickly plummet to 25? I don’t see why not.
“Yep, that’s what I heard,” I say.
The dad and son from the back join us. The dad carries four two-foot-long galvanized pipes and the son a basket weighted down by a bunch of fittings. I’m kind of curious whether they’re fixing a leaky pipe or, a better bet, fashioning cool pipe legs. Either way, the line is at a standstill and the dad gives me a what’s up look.
“Are you in line?” he asks me.
“Yeah.”
The owner begins to describe snow to his assistant by cupping his hands on the counter. “It’s white and gets hard on the ground.”
“But first it comes from the sky,” the old man says and repeats his pantomime.
“It’s very cold,” says the owner.
The assistant seems in need of a hug. The owner turns to his phone for an image of snow.
“What’s going on?” the dad asks.
“We’re trying to describe snow,” I say.
“What?”
“He’s never seen it.”
The son glances at the assistant as possibly the strangest creature he’s ever seen, and the dad is clearly impatient to get on with the day, all possible signs that they might be new to the neighborhood and not acclaimated to most of their neighbors. Otherwise they would see with unjaded eyes what it’s like to be discovering the wonders of a new world.
In any case, the old man now has his package and is stepping back from the counter. “You’ll see,” he says to us all and waves goodbye.
The owner slides my spackle over to the register. The assistant looks glum, or I think he does, so I say, “It’s really pretty when it snows.”
The dad and his son pile their purchases on the counter as the owner smiles and shakes his head. I take my change and spackle and walk out.
A block or two later there comes into view a small man sitting on a milk crate by the curb. He leans on a little cart with the Puerto Rican flag painted on one side. Centered in the cart is a huge block of ice under a wet towel, and arranged around the edges are old 40s malt liquor bottles now filled with different color syrups that corresponds to their flavors.
This is the idea: run over, ask for extra ice and maybe a piña colada or lemon, then return to the hardware store and say to the assistant, “This is snow.”
And this is what I do, settling on the whitest piña colada and running back to the store before the ice melts in the 100-degree heat. There’s only the owner and his assistant in the store now when I hand the ice to the young man.
“Snow’s like this,” I say.
The assistant is so very confused as he takes the cup.
“I’m thinking we should get the shovels out,” the owner laughs. “Six whole inches is a lot of snow.”
“You can eat it. It’s good,” I say and leave, embarrassed by not knowing why I do these dumb things all the time. Accost unsuspecting strangers by trying to explain intangible complexities with something so elementary as a cup of shaved ice.
A couple of minutes later, I’m in the grocery store picking up salad stuff for dinner because I am not cooking in this heat. With a slight tinge of alarm and levity, the DJ on the radio station the store plays reports, “Going to be some big storm tonight. Buckle up, folks. Six inches or maybe a foot of rain coming.”
I really wish it would snow.
Me and this crazy dog are working in a tiny room with the AC blasting. Obviously, we need company and would love to hear from you!
. . . .and on a personal note, just tried to make lunch and I slit the top of my thumb with a knife I didn’t think was sharp and now the sink looks like a slasher movie. How’s your Tuesday going?