Sandy Springs: Nature’s lesson in loss of control

For most living here in our little corner of Elysium, this week of snow and ice has been more aggravation than calamity. My wife and I had power, Internet service and plenty of food. Our work schedules took a hit, but we weren’t the ones sleeping on the floor of the bus station or having to park an 18-wheeler on I-285 for 24 hours.

In times like this we are able to more keenly categorize the events in our lives. How many of us were adversely affected by days of being housebound? Adversely defined as in the neighborhood of a true emergency? It’s like realizing the fine line between want and need.

Kept from the things I’d planned this week I found the time to sort through old files, purging documents no longer needed. Hidden among the detritus was a treasure of pictures of the kids not seen in years, stories from my first daily newspaper job and surplus wedding invitations from when Carol and I walked the aisle 12 years ago. I found memories.

Venturing just down the street I got to see another generation of little Sandy Springsteens zooming down one of the all-time great sledding hills, Underwood Drive. Some had sleds, others snowboards, and still others used whatever worked. I took the time to watch those same kids, tired and damp, straggling home at dusk, cheeks reddened from several downhill runs and reveling in an experience they can’t get on a Wii.

We are a mighty coquettish lot. So often in the everyday hurly-burly of life I hear the lament: “I wish I had a few days to do nothing but [fill in your favorite couch-potato pastime].” Many of those this week found surplus access to the easy chair to be less than the wonderful experience they’d imagined.

Maybe those self-help hucksters are right. We’re human doings, not human beings. Not entirely a good thing, methinks. The ability to be or not to be can be the line between serenity and discord.

Soon enough this will dry up and the week will dissolve into family legends. Remember that snow we had in ’10? We used a pizza pan for a sled? That goofy snowman? Or was it 2011? My prayer is that few will remember they didn’t make it to their favored barista for five or six days, as well as the coupons they never got to use.