Well, the fun part is over. Tomorrow morning the entire Washington area will go back to work. Instead of news coverage of a city still and quiet, except for the sound of kids sledding, the 11 pm news is filled with doom and gloom. Worst rush hour ever expected! Melting snow will cause enormous floods this weekend! Metro trains running on erratic schedules! Side streets not to be plowed for days!
I knew it couldn’t last, but… even this morning–while I was shoveling an admittedly small channel through a 4 foot pile of snow, just making a path wide enough for me and my neighbors to reach the parking lot–I found myself smiling a bit, enjoying sore muscles and gossiping with neighbors, not thinking about war or terror or even commuting. I wish we could take a little bit of that feeling with us, but our attitudes are like the snow. They eventually begin to turn gray and dirty, then stick to the undersides of our cars and fly off and hit other people’s windshields.
How’s that for a metaphor?
