Three days ago, the weather grew suddenly cold where I live in Port Townsend, WA, and for the last two mornings there has been light snow and frost on our roofs and on the ground.  This is not typical weather for Western Washington, so when I arose and saw sudden snow falling fast and sticking but only for only about 30 minutes, I remembered an essay I had written in 1993.

I had begun the essay after a friend laughingly talked about the news reports on TV and how they were all about the anticipated but never arriving snowstorms.  The way she smiled about how silly the newscasters looked standing on bridges in clear weather talking about non-existent snow instead of world and local news made me think about the way the snow (or no-snow) reports affected me.  I was definitely hoping for snow, and the more I saw the local reporters on TV, the more I hoped what they were warning us about would come true.  But like my friend, I couldn’t understand why there was so much airtime spent about our anticipation of the storm. When I began writing, I was writing as a way to figure out what we were all getting from so much news coverage about snow.

Here is the essay I wrote in 1993:

Snow Days

This winter, all of the snow reports for the Puget Sound area have been off. When six to eight inches is expected to arrive by morning, nothing comes. When the weather folks say the precipitation will certainly be rain,  several inches of snow accumulate. The Farmer’s Almanac predicted the winter of 1992/93 to be cold and snowy in our area, so our anticipation rises as the mercury drops. During the nightly news, reporters stand on freeway overpasses or in front of Metro bus stops looking for the flakes.  Anchormen ask them for words of advice they might have for those who face a commute the next morning, should there be snow. The advice is delivered: rise early enough to leave time to defrost your windshield and brush away the snow.

I laughed when I heard this as KING-TV’s evening “Top Story.” With so much going on in the world, how could looking for flakes be most important? Clearly the producers use the “Top Story” to keep viewers tuned to the news by capitalizing on their ingrained Western Washington snow panic.

 Tonight, another snow alert is in effect, according to the media meteorologists. My son is wishing for enough snow to afford him a short break from school. My daughter, who leaves on a plane trip tomorrow, is hoping that weather conditions don’t shorten her visit to see her beau in Chicago by even one minute. My husband will have no commute to his home office, but snow still means a laid back approach to his day as those he needs to call will not have made it into their offices. And as a college teacher with a new class meeting tomorrow, I indulge a secret delight about the possibility of putting off meeting so many new people and instead just reading snuggled under my covers.

Now I understand the top billing of the snow story–it is not only our panic and addiction to feeling unsettled and anxious that draws us to the TV screens to watch winter-jacketed reporters with foggy breath deliver their vague but urgent warnings. It is also the time this watching gives us to name our secret desires, to entertain the “what if” of our tomorrows, to contemplate how we spend time and how we’d like to spend it.

I’ll go to bed tonight prepared to rise early to bring my daughter to the airport. But I’ll need more than just the time to deal with my car. I’ll need some time to spend at the window taking in the transformed neighborhood. I’ll need same to fix hot cereal and cocoa the way my mother did on cold Midwestern and East Coast days. Once outside, I’ll need some time to pack and throw a few snowballs, to lie down and make a snow angel, to not only defrost my windshield and wipe away the snow, but to talk to my neighbors who will be out doing the same. In Western Washington, we don’t shovel or salt our walks. Most of us don’t even own snow shovels because we never expect the snow to stay for long.

I’m sure I don’t really expect the snow despite my plan to rise early enough to cope with it. But what if my classes didn’t meet tomorrow? What if I could read the new novel I have on my table? What if my family could sit around together and have a long pancake breakfast instead of running off in all directions? What if seeing the snow first thing in the morning, I could remember how quiet transformation is, how tiny the crystals that can change our world?

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I am sure that you can pull much from your heart and mind by exploring what is going on in the news that seems illogical to you.  Although taking on the news coverage of war and disasters might lead to something you have to say, to guard against being overwhelmed by the news story itself, take on a lighter local interest story as I did or perhaps one of the many the news introduces but never follows up on.  For instance, I remember a years-ago story on the nightly news for many evenings about a bloodstain shaped like the Madonna that was creeping through the walls in somebody’s house in the South.  For three consecutive evenings, the local television news reported the story, and on the last broadcast said that scientists were venturing there to find out what the cause of the bloodstain might be aside from something paranormal.   The TV news station never reported the findings or what happened from there. The incomplete news story has stayed with me for at least 15 years.  Today, as I write about it, I think, “Aren’t there so many times in our lives where people don’t get back to us? Where we don’t get back to ourselves?” This thought, like the one, “How am I affected by the anticipation of snow?” could lead to an essay.  I might start with the news story and then leap by association to particular times I felt frustrated not to know the end of the story–what ever happened with a love affair an ex-boyfriend left me for or how people used a curriculum I wrote or if clients of mine got their work published.  What do I do with all the unknown endings and threads?  That would be the real work of the essay–to find out how I live with only parts of the story.  Do I enjoy wondering? Do I make assumptions of endings? Does the unknown fuel my writing? Do I merely forget only to remember I am wondering? How does this work?

If you are looking for a way into a personal essay, pay attention to the local late evening or noon television news. They are full of small stories with no endings and little consequence, just the kind of material that can spark your writing and help you find out something meaningful and worth evoking.