MY VIEW
Bob Poczik: Cold, rainy day offers time for contemplation
It’s raining outside on this fall morning. It’s also bone-chillingly cold. I sit inside looking out, and sense that it could be what my tai chi teacher calls a low energy day. It will be a good morning for some hot oatmeal with raisins, walnuts and cinnamon.
I had moved from reading my book on our back porch and now am curled up on our daybed under a warm blanket with Dan Brown’s intriguing, fast-moving book, “The Lost Symbol,” and a mug of freshly brewed hot coffee. Our dog is curled up on a comfortable chair nearby. He was smart enough to move inside before I shivered and followed him.
Morning Classics is playing in the background on WNED 94.5, and I am the only one awake in our home at this early hour. I look out and reflect on the rain coming down, the absolutely blessed rain
that will water the lawn and flowers, bushes and trees. The rain that makes Western New York such a wondrously green and fresh area of the country, as anyone can attest who has been to parched, rain-starved Texas and the Southwest, where green lawns can only be maintained with great effort and high utility costs. I also feel somewhat smug because I had just mowed the lawn the day before.
I remember years ago hearing a weatherman describe a terrible prolonged drought in the Western part of our nation and then shift to local weather and say something like, “Bad news for you golfers this weekend, more rain.” I thought: Doesn’t he see how incongruous it is to complain about a little inconvenient weekend rain when elsewhere people are dying for rain?
So this morning, as I curl up with my book and coffee, I give thanks for the miracle of the life-giving, life-renewing rain outside my window. It won’t be too many months from now when I will be spending early mornings reading yet another book on the same daybed, looking out to see snow coming down and the lawn covered with snow. The back porch will be packed away until next summer, and there may be a fire in the fireplace. No more staying ahead of the rain to keep the lawn mowed. Now it’s a matter of staying ahead of the snow to keep the driveway and path to the front door clear.
And that snow that so many people in other parts of the country make fun of Buffalo for is another one of our local blessings. Like rain, it contributes to our plentiful supply of water and power. In addition, it provides great downhill and cross-country skiing, skating, sledding for kids and picture- postcard holiday scenes when bright outdoor Christmas lights reflect on new-fallen snow.
There is a wonderful book about Polish immigrants and one particular East Side bar in Buffalo, “The Last Fine Time” by Verlyn Klinkenborg. In the prologue, he writes: “It is the mood that makes a snowstorm, and the mood in Buffalo begins as a rumor. Suddenly the mood shifts. Snow is falling. Well. It is a relief somehow. It is an event. It is something. It could be worse.” Now I defy anyone living in San Diego, Atlanta or Houston to begin to understand what that means.
We who live here know that the strong winds that blow across Lake Erie and dump lake-effect snow on us in the winter, next summer will be the same winds that bring us marvelous cooling breezes and clear blue skies that should be the envy of the many people who live in cities with gray, smoggy skies. So, upon reflection, I guess I don’t mind this rainy day very much at all.
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