Yesterday, when the power blew because of the 60mph winds during the blizzard, I took my birds into the bedroom and read by candlelight until it was too dark to see anymore. It is, for the record, possible to keep a room from freezing if you burn enough candles but eventually the air smells strange. That was the point, when I worried about what I was breathing, when the lights blinked back on and I heard the water heater kick in so I knew it would be warm soon. It continued to snow through the night only stopping forty-three hours after it started, and I‘m not surprised that what I wanted most besides a hot cup of coffee was my Wifi connection.

This was not my first Cape Cod blizzard; it may not even have been the worst. Two years ago, power went out several times during a series of nor’easters, once for twenty-three hours. The winter I was in Yarmouth Port there were storms that knocked trees down and when, as I lived in the basement, I couldn’t leave the house. Or, I could get out but not off the property since so much snow was piled up against the fence I couldn’t open it. Yesterday I heard someone outside yelling for help. I couldn’t see them from my window so I went downstairs but the snow was so deep I couldn’t open the front door. Someone else must have called the cops because shortly thereafter I saw flashing lights and glowing neon vests through the white out, although a plow had to come dig them out. But at least it didn’t flood like on Nantucket. The beaches around Herring Cove took a beating and a bad breach in the Truro barrier dunes flooded the Pamet again, but unless it snows Friday as predicted, most of the snow will be gone by the weekend, unlike in Boston or New York which can hold on to their snow for weeks.

There was a blizzard in January of 1978 during a garbage strike and I remember getting out of the subway at Rockefeller Center and not being able to see across Fifth Avenue since there were piles of trash under the plowed up snow along the sidewalk. I worked at Saks that winter and was in a boutique in front of the elevators on the seventh floor when the doors of one slid open and out stepped John Lennon and Yoko Ono in those famous fur parkas. I was stunned; they basically had the place to themselves because of the weather, and he was very charming when he told me Yoko needed sweaters. I would wait on them again at the Soho Charcuterie. I was a busgirl when there was no such thing - I’d show up at a table with water and customers would always comment on their busboy being a woman - and the waiter had sent me over without warning me who was being served. They were with Peter Boyle and his wife, and John asked for water with boobles in it. I capped his ashtray, I still have his cigarette butt in a little green box, and Yoko, who was cranky and picked at her food, needed a doggy bag. I also saw the Beatles first US concert; they played the Ed Sullivan show and then took the train, if you can believe it, from New York to DC where my family lived at the time. There was a snowstorm then too, I was 14, it was February; my life would never be the same.