Neon Rainbow

I remember that it began to snow in the morning before the first bell rang. Every student rushed to the long cold window to watch the big soggy flakes fall past and flutter down to the grass at street level. It was early in the season, early in December, and the snowflakes were too wet to stick. They kissed the grass briefly, then dissolved, as suddenly as dreams upon waking fly away. Nonetheless, we had our hopes. Each of us had his and her hopes and watched together for that one vigorous, high-spirited, cold-hearted flake to take hold, to linger, to join with another of like-minded ideal and thus become the first weave of a thick white bell muffling traffic stopping school terminating carpet of snow.

But there was more than this. 

We had all just come in from the cold, ears nipped by the chill and still tingling, noses pink and probably running, tennis shoes squeaking and stocking caps steaming, and there seemed something newly minted about us, fresh-baked, an unusual glimmer, a glaze.  Someone had turned on a transistor radio, allowed before the sounding of the bell, and the song playing was Neon Rainbow, by the Box Tops. 

All the people going places
Smiling with electric faces
What they find the glow erases
What they lose the glow replaces, 
And life is love ... 

And moreover, and most of all, and most importantly there was the red-haired girl, singing along to that song, my favorite song--and Ah! Hers too! Surely we were meant for each other, surely we were meant to marry someday (but how to speak? How to say such a thing?) What flurry of snow, I wondered then, could match the flurry of freckles on her face? What greater future than to count them all?

I fell in love, for the first time, that very day.

And later it rained. 

But I've never forgotten what might have been. Through all the years that have drifted down and melted away, there remains that uniquely minted moment, frozen in time, honest, true, irreproachable. 

As pure as driven snow. 

No Problem

As far as I can calculate, our foreign exchange student, Mamdouh, knows, with confidence, no more than seven words of English. These are Yes, No, Hi, Bye, Now, and No problem.

As a rule, foreign exchange students will tend to learn more of English as they mix in with our conversation and culture. In the case of Mamdouh, however, I believe he has actually learned less of English than he started with.

I asked him the other day, for instance, whether he would prefer a piece of toast or a waffle, and he said Yes.

I asked if this meant he wanted both, and he said Now?

You see how it goes?

At another time I had loaned him my cigarette lighter for a moment. When, later, I could not find the lighter, and asked him about it, he told me that this was No problem.

I expressed my feeling that it may not be a problem to him, but it was, in fact, a bit of a problem for me.

Yes, he answered.

We have not seen Mamdouh for three days now. While the rest of the city lies frozen in the present blizzard of snow and ice, Mamdouh is out somewhere driving with his buddies in his new Camry, no snow tires, no chains, no experience.

It is, as he says, No problem.

I know it must sound silly to you folks who are accustomed to snow in the winter, but here in Portland, Oregon, when it snows, life stops. Your car is stuck, you can't go anywhere without chains, and even with chains on, most of us have no idea how to drive in the snow anyway.

So it happens that we find ourselves stuck in the house. Day after day. The simplest things have become impossible--a cup of Starbucks, a trip to the store, not to mention Christmas shopping. Good thing he have no money anyway, because there is no way this Christmas week to get out and buy anything.

White Christmas is not all it's cracked up to be. It may have worked in the old days, when people traveled on horseback, or riding in a sleigh, but it doesn't work for cars.

A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.

Cabin fever. It gets so bad that you actually sit down and write meaningless crap like this just for something to do.

Nicotine Fit

I do not know my limits with MS. I only discover them after it is too late.

Today's discovery came about because of cigarettes, or rather a lack of the same. It is snowing here, you see, and the night has deposited an inch or so of sleet on top of the snow, and neither the snow nor the sleet are going anywhere soon, as the temperature remains at around 20 degrees Fahrenheit (not to mention the wind chill factor, nor indeed that the wind is blowing like a bastard out of hell).

This, of course, means no possibility of driving. It means that the only way to get cigarettes will be to walk eight blocks to the 7-11 store.

I decide to quit instead. I am struck suddenly with a profound sense of the sort of desperation that nicotine addiction can drive one to. I resolve that this is where I draw the line--between prudence and madness, between addiction and self control.

Ten minutes later, in coat and hood and hat and gloves, I head out the door.

One of the first things I realize after 2 blocks or so is that the wind is blowing in every direction at once. This is not actually supposed to happen according to natural laws, but the evidence, as it buffets all sides of my body, is undeniable.

The second thing I realize, on perhaps the fourth block, is that I have MS and my left leg has stiffened up like a frozen screw and bolt, and I am probably not going to make it to the 7-11, much less back home again.

Frozen also are my nose and my lips, along with my last Camel, which, protruding from the unfeeling corner of my mouth, may or may not have burned through the filter and down to the skin--I don't know, because 1) I can't feel my face, and 2) I can't see out of the film of ice that has formed on the lenses of my spectacles.

I am halfway to the store, halfway from home. I forge on, doing my best to bring my left leg along with me. If I don't make it, if I collapse here in a snowbank, people will at least be able to follow the drag marks left by my useless foot. He came this way, the searchers will say, I can see the track from the side of his Nike.

A block away now. My face is a frozen mask, my lips rigid in the form of the last puff they took on the Camel. In my own imaginary mirror I look just like Lee Harvey Oswald at the moment he was shot by Jack Ruby. If you have ever seen the picture, you will know what I mean. I have taken off my glasses in order to see the snowdrifts in my way, but I think now that my eyeballs themselves are freezing, for I can see hardly any better than before.

Can I really, having come this far, enter the 7-11 looking like this--frozen face mimicking the shock of murder, eyeballs fixed like a doll's, dragging my left leg as if I had in fact just recently been shot?

But of course I must. It's between that and joining the snowmen I have met in yards along the way.

The clerk, a friendly woman from Nepal who knows me well, brings my cigarettes to the counter without needing to be asked. It is a stroke of good luck that she is there, for I cannot move my lips, and another employee may not have been able to understand my gestures.

I held up a hand, however. Then I removed the glove and and spread my five fingers.

I'm not doing this again. Not anytime soon. Five packs will last me five days, and perhaps, just perhaps, both I and the city will thaw out by then.

Snow

Snow in Portland this week. A fairly rare occurrence here. It will generally snow maybe once or twice in the winter, then quickly turn to rain and slush. But this week the temperatures are in the teens and 20s and we have some bitter winds that are keeping things frozen. Yesterday my wife wouldn't let me go out, but then she took a nap later and I snuck away for a Starbucks.