Chicago drifts, Venice floats

They had a snow day in Chicago the other day and I was jealous.  Snow's not a big part of my life anymore.  There was a light dusting on January 30th.  As in light, I mean you could still see the grass and most of the pavement.  I rode my bike 18 miles that day and everyone was shocked.  "Really?  In the snow?" they asked.  There was less than a centimeter.

Where does the sidewalk end
and the canal begin?

I was also pleasantly surprised with about an hour of big, wet flakes on December 26th in Berlin.  It was almost a white Christmas.

But before that?  The last time I saw real snow was on my birthday at the top of Monte Grappa. The end of April is supposed to bring May flowers not snow showers.  But for a girl that loves snow, a white birthday is even better than a white Christmas.  So I've decided Monte Grappa has to become a birthday tradition.

Anyway, I was jealous of my friends that got to spend the whole day (and then some) in the snow after the fifth largest blizzard on record in Chicago.  The snow never used to stop me from doing anything.  I still rode my bike, even if it meant pushing it a little on the side streets. I still ran.  In fact, I got out of bed earlier on snowy days, attached little rubber things with spikes to my running shoes and ran. And I always went out for dinner on blizzardy nights.  I'd walk five blocks just to spend a little more time in the snow and I never used an umbrella like my Italian friends so embarrassingly do.

When I heard about last week's blizzard in Chicago I was in Venice.  I didn't have any students until the evening so I decided to go take a long walk.  That's when I called a friend and found out that her family was home for a snow day.  Ahhhh....a snow day.

I remember going to bed on snowy nights as a kid hoping the next day would be a snow day.  When I woke up it would be dark outside and inside, but the kitchen radio would already be on.  I can still hear the announcer's voice as he read the list.  He put a dramatic pause between the names of schools to seemingly tease his young listeners.  If I heard a school in a town near mine I was hopeful.  And then there it was, "Lowell Area Schools, closed."  A snow day!  People around here don't even know what that means.

When I got home from Venice that day there was an email from my niece in Michigan.  Her school was also closed.  I'd written to tell her about my walk in Venice because she loves it there, too.  She replied saying she wished she'd been with me in Venice while the whole time I'd been wishing I was with her on her snow day.   "The grass is always greener," I thought.

It wasn't until bedtime, when I always reflect on my day to decide if I'm living life to the fullest (which I often think I'm not), that I realized I'd missed something special.  I'd really had my own kind of snow day in Venice, but it hadn't dawned on me until it was too late.  It was a day of  acqua alta, high water.  I took a photo years ago of the yellow tables and chairs in Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square) with their legs a couple of centimeters deep in water surrounded by soggy confetti from Carnevale.  I thought it was the perfect photo of acqua alta.  I've seen the temporary walkways in use a couple of times, transporting tourists from one sight to another.  I've never used them.  I just walked through the shallow puddles thinking the platforms were a bit excessive.  I used to think that acqua alta meant some areas might be impassable without getting your feet a little wet.  That was before I saw a real day of high water when there are no yellow tables and chairs in the piazza because they'd float away.  The walkways are definitely not excessive.  They're to keep you out of foot-deep water, not shallow puddles.  And the impassable areas aren't just places where you might get your feet wet.  They're places where you might fall into the canal because you can't tell where the sidewalk ends and the canal begins.

Mail and packages are still delivered

My original plan for my day in Venice had been to take the vaporetto to the island of Murano, but the route had been suspended.  I wasn't really sure why, but I assumed it meant the water on a particular canal was high and they didn't want the extra waves of the boats crashing on the already deteriorating walls.  I later learned the water was so high that the boats could no longer fit under some of the bridges.  

Instead of glass beads in Murano I decided to walk to a little glass store in Dorsoduro. I knew how to get there, but soon discovered that my regular route was underwater.  The only alternative was turning around and finding another.  I didn't want to buy a pair of rubber boots for 15 euros or a pair of neon plastic boot bags to slip on over my own leather boots for 8 euros.  I thought the rubber boots might give me blisters and I would've had to carry my own boots around all day, so that was out.  And I'd seen a number of people struggling to keep their neon boots in place, so they didn't seem like such a good idea either.  I thought my dad's old rubbers might come in handy.  He had the kind that went up to his calf and zipped up the front.  They were just black rubber like the tube for my bike tires.  He used to wear them over his 'good' shoes.  No blisters because you still have your shoes on.  And nothing to keep pulling up because the rubber of a bike tire tube in contact with leather isn't exactly slippery.  But then I realized that the zipper was sufficient to keep the snow and rain out, but not the acqua alta.  

Having given up on my beads, I decided a visit to Piazza San Marco with acqua alta was a must. It's not easy to get to there using back streets on a normal day in Venice.  A day like this was an even bigger challenge.  I'd be moving along feeling lucky and recognizing shops and bridges from previous walks and suddenly a small group of non-boot wearing tourists would be coming my way. I knew they'd reached an impassable point and had turned around.  So, I'd turn around too.  Fortunately I had all day and eventually I made it.

Three construction workers.  One carries the ladder.
The other carries the guy that forgot his rubber boots.

I don't know why it didn't strike me as extraordinary at the time.  I took a few pictures just because I always take a few pictures when I'm in Venice.  I was definitely struck by the high water this time more than I had been other times, but not as struck as I should've been.  It was my fascination (and grass-is-greener attitude) with the blizzard in Chicago that later gave me a different perspective on my day in Venice.  

The reason I liked snow days was because they were different.  I got to wear my snow boots.  In Venice they get to wear their high water boots.  Even though blizzards were a little inconvenient, I liked to walk down sidewalks where only a narrow path had been shoveled; just like walking on the temporary platforms in Venice.  When I was a kid there were no sidewalks where I lived and people drove snowmobiles down the main roads on snow days.  In Venice they drive boats down the main roads every day!  In both cases the mail still gets delivered by a probably even more disgruntled than usual postman.  And in both cases restaurants and shops are still open with either narrow paths in the snow or bridges to reach their front doors.  In Chicago the floors were a little slushy and sometimes covered with opened cardboard boxes to avoid slipping, but we still went out for dinner.  In Venice, there are restaurants and shops with six inches of water on the floor, but the boot-clad customers still dine and shop.  

I went to bed that night thinking about the fact that I've been living my life in a "grass-is-greener" mode for a long time.  It's always greener some place else. It's seldom greener where I am.  Italians say it like this, "L'erba del vicino e' sempre piu' verde."  The neighbor's grass is always greener.  Having forgotten the exact quote in English I googled it and found, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence."  I also discovered a wonderful updated version for people like me.  "The grass is always greener where you water it."  That's when I realized I have to stop relying on blizzards and acqua alta to do the watering.  Maybe if I do a little watering myself, every day will have some of the excitement and curiousity of a snow day no matter which side of the fence I'm on.


Do what you can with what you have where you are.  --Theodore Roosevelt