Suddenly it’s winter in Iowa.

Suddenly, it’s winter in Iowa.

By morning, it’s likely that as much as eight inches of snow will cover the ground. Outside, in the whipcrack winter wind that pushes the snow into every crevice and cranny, neighbors will talk across driveways, shovels in hand. It may be the first time they’ve spoken face to face since summer, when aromatic grass-filled garbage bags brought them to the curb at the same time. They’ll linger, catching their breath; breath that will rise and drift away like the memory of days when sunlight shone fourteen hours or more. Small talk between scoops will start with the cold and the snow, of course, and drift to children and relatives living in warmer climes. They’ll chuckle and poke fun at themselves for spending the bulk of their lives in the Midwest, or they’ll curse their misfortune at not being able to leave. The condition of the roads, speculation on whether schools will be open, grumbling about the local politicians, and the rumble of a passing snowplow will, with enough snow and time, move to the war, Enron, and the state of the union. A hundred small conversations will greet the lone walker covering the length of the block from the middle of the street, drifting and fading from each garage and driveway like an AM radio scanning frequencies on a hot summer evening. They’re activities and sounds and communication that will once again, if only for a moment, make neighbors neighbors.

And when, their clothes feeling heavier for the exertion, they tuck the shovels into the garage or the storage shed, they’ll step into a warm house with little further thought of the contact. They’re not callous. They’re certainly not unfriendly or uncaring. The memory of that neighborly conversation will fade simply because it is, after all, just one of many threads in the fabric of life in Iowa.

Tony
Steidler-Dennison