There was no need to speak of unspeakable things. Snowdrifts and winter storms had become abstract nouns to my household. No way would those things appear on our mental radars or on any current weather map. Never could they become a topic of discussion. Not on this trip. Not in this season.
It was mid-July after all. The year was 1998—a summer hotter than a burnt pot roast. Sounds good at this time, doesn’t it? The hot temps, I mean, not the pot roast. Well, both. But don’t burn the pot roast.
The entire northeastern region of the US was smothered in a drought that summer, and there we were, amidst it all—the five of us packed inside our minivan, on a family vacation, touring the New England states.
One of our sleeps was at a bed and breakfast that offered private cottages. In an orchard. In a never-heard-of place called Fairlee, Vermont. Home to Lake Morey. And indigenous moose if you’re lucky enough to see one. When we checked in at the cottage and signed the guest registry, the owner—a graying man—became animated with our being from Toledo. Thankfully he didn’t run us off. Or loose a moose on us.
The man said his brother lived in Sylvania, Ohio. The New Englander had visited his brother there once. And he insisted he would NEVER go back to Ohio, ever-ever again, “because of all the terrible blizzards there!”
I laughed and said, “Let me guess. It was January 1978.”
When the man confirmed, I told him that The Blizzard Of ’78 was an unusual weather outburst. An anomaly. A hundred year storm. Although I was only fifteen when the blizzard hit, I remembered it as well as the Vermont gentleman did.
What a sight. Everything was shut down. The entire city was snowed in for a full week. Roads were impassable. Semi trucks were lined in drifts on the highways, their drivers rescued by snowmobile. All of that was this man’s perception of Ohio, as if it were our norm. Enough that he vowed never to return. In a lighthearted way, I wanted to remind the man it’s been twenty years. Get over it! But I didn’t. He had probably taken a few good photos of all that snow as a reminder. So that was his reality.
I have since pondered how our perceptions can be skewed by a single event or something temporary. The Vermont man did it with Ohio. We do it with the people. Snapshots. That’s what I call them. Those tiny milliseconds where we witness others at their worst possible self, having that uncharacteristic or blizzard-like outburst. A moment of rudeness here, an act of uncaring there. Sometimes that person is us. Okay, okay. Sorry! I’ll leave you out of it. Sometimes that person is me.
Is it an accurate depiction of who we are when someone grabs a snapshot at that off moment? Or they brand us because of a brief failure? Is it acceptable for them to place a seal of disapproval on our heads because we weren’t our usual self? Those snapshots can judge someone falsely.
Have we done that to others? Do we assume the worst when they are not at their best? To do so would be to say that all Ohio winters are like the one of January 1978.
After a twenty-year boycott, it would be a shame if the man in Vermont hadn’t found forgiveness with Ohio. How tragic if he never again enjoyed the company of his brother because of holding onto snapshots of frigid memories.