is ignorance bliss?

1.  Avalanche

Last night I read about avalanches. The ones that typically slide down a mountain and bury anyone in their path. It appears that the spot I have decided would be the ideal skiing location, were I to travel anywhere to ski, is quite the hotbed of avalanche activity. I am curious how that plays out in the everyday lives of people who live there. Or travel to it. 

I learned that there are two types of avalanches and the ones that are the scariest (meaning fastest and doing, therefore, most damage) are slab avalanches, where bonded snow breaks off and roars down the incline. In spring, you tend to see many point release avalanches. The snow is wet and heavy and you rarely find people hanging out in danger zones. Deaths are less frequent.

Mountain ski areas rate the danger each day. They give a score to the likelihood of avalanche -- from 1 to 5. 1 Is the least likely, but they caution you it's not zero. There is, apparently, no such thing as a day with zero probability of an avalanche.

People that go off the trails (in North America, this is often not allowed, but in Europe it's permissible and many do this) are in far greater danger, and they are advised to travel with avalanche burial equipment. Transceivers, shovels, probes. The things is, you can't do yourself any good with these -- it's not as if you can dig yourself out of a burial -- it's for rescuing others near you who may have been swept away by moving snows. If you ski alone, all that stuff is pretty useless, especially since you have between 5 - 15 minutes before your own CO2 does you in. 

All this is super interesting, because frankly, in all my years of skiing, I never gave avalanches a second thought. For that matter, I never wore a helmet when downhill skiing. No one did. (Helmets are routine now: you're a fool to not put one on.) On my last Alpine skiing adventure (recorded here, 5 years ago), I ignored the dangerous winds, I was unaware of avalanche ratings, I was without head protection, and I seem to have skied through rib damage inflicted by some Russian skier who barrelled into me at top speed. 

I wonder if, knowing what I know now (about rib pain, about winds and avalanches), I would still have found myself on top of that Alpine ridge, looking down to Italy on one side and Switzerland on the other. Indeed, in these Covid times, would I even get on a gondola to get to that ridge in the first place?

Was it bliss then to live in ignorance?

2. Speak Your Mind

As you know, I maintain a strong connection to my friends in Poland. We often Zoom, I correspond heavily with one of them. I grew up in Poland as a little kid, then, too, as a teenager and university student. So you could say my formative years were spent in Poland. A Poland where even badass kids never talked back to a teacher. They smoked whatever they smoked outside of class, they skipped lessons and drank beer or vodka and probably snitched things that weren't for the taking. But they never talked back to a teacher. There was a line that you did not cross.

On the other hand, my elementary school years were spent in New York and I finished the university studies in New York and my mother herself spent pretty much all her formative years in New York. So there is a lot of New York in me.

I'm torn between the two cultures, that's for sure. And nowhere is this more evident than in the way I talk to people. Mine is a combination of blunt forwardness (the American influence) and cowardice in the face of authority (the Polish influence). And I don't mean political authority. I mean authority in school or at home. In my Polish world, young people were deferential to older people. Adult kids of my friends do not treat me as an equal. And my friends, I think, listen with horror when I sometimes lose the tone of respect that they maintain all the time when referencing those who are older in their family. My American side allows me to occasionally slip off that ladder of respect. Occasionally. Quietly, on the side. But, my Polish side (of my youth -- who knows how people act now) is rigidly in place: you never disrespect your elders to their face. Ed cannot understand this. He is blunt. He is honest. He does not cower. He hung up on his mother when she said things that were noxious. My Polish friends and I would never hang up on our mothers. (My mother shares the blunt speak that was handed to her in New York. She and Ed can blunt speak their way together through any problem.)

The thing is, the older I get the more I miss this here, in the US -- the reverence for age. Sure, in Poland you may curse your great aunt Jadwiga behind her back, but she will never know that you find her placement of a Christmas tree weird. She will go to her grave thinking that all those years, you loved her putting that tree on the kitchen table. 

Isn't it bliss to live in that kind of ignorance?

3. He Is Not An Angry Person

I have been together with Ed for more than 16 years and in all that time I have never heard him raise his voice in anger toward me. This is remarkable, because he is big, and he has a loud booming voice, and I am sure I have provoked him plenty of times. His preferred method is to grow quiet rather than grow loud when someone crosses him.

I should say that anger isn't something I have within me either, but I do get upset. You wont ever hear a torrent of curse words from me, but every half year or so, maybe even less frequently, I will unleash the fountain of tears and they will flow, and flow, and flow. And then I, too, will grow quiet. We are just not shouters, here at the farmhouse.

Some people will say that quiet aggression is nonetheless as noxious as hysterical wailing and shouting. I disagree. I'm with the opinion writer in the NYT today (read it here) who wonders whether we overuse and hyper-inflate words  to give them the strength they don't deserve. Experiencing obnoxiousness in another person doesn't necessarily inflict trauma. And no, every retreat into silence is not passive aggression. Just some of it is. You can usually tell the difference just by looking at the quiet person's intent.

I've always wondered if Ed had been different as a young guy. Surely in a house full of rowdy brothers, he was rowdy and angry right back at them. Surely he complained and yelled and whined when he was a little guy. But I prefer not to think back about him that far. I prefer to see him always as I know him today -- the quiet guy who never gets angry.

 

 

 

Isn't it bliss to live in ignorance (of someone's past behavior)?

4. The Knee

It turns out that the Ace bandage is fantastically effective on knees that have whatever my knee has going on inside.  So of course, living in a consumer culture, where more is thought to be better, I want to get the next better guard: the knee brace. 

Ed is skeptical. Wouldn't it be better to simply stay off the knee? Oh such naivete! There is no staying off the knee when you're around little kids, or when your home bathroom is up steep stairs, or when dinner preparation is all on you. (Please, no advice needed here: I do not want to eat meals cooked by Ed.) Besides, knee injuries take a long time to heal. I've had this one go down on me once before (from overuse, after days and days of nonstop walking/hiking). I need immediate relief. Life goes on! I need to move!

But, but aren't I asking for trouble in the long run?

Who can tell. My speculation about "trouble in the long run" did not anticipate a pandemic that would rip two years out of my senior travels. I do not know what next year will bring.

And perhaps ignorance is bliss.

5. The Child

Once again I am with Snowdrop. She had proclaimed, in a very Anne of Green Gables way, that today is going to be the best day of her life! I wondered if we should do something in the afternoon to commemorate that, but in the end, we just came home to the farmhouse. The sun was out in a patchy sky for a bit, but then it disappeared and a haze of insignificant light snow rolled in. Snowdrop just wants to come in and do what we always do: play, read, eat. The trilogy of pleasures.

As I watch her play and spin her stories, I think about the defining characteristics of this child. In many ways, she is like any other seven year old. But I do believe that each child has her superpower. And there is one place (well, more than one, but let's stay with this for a while) where I think she stands out (and this is what draws kids to her): she practices intentional kindness. It's on her mind. And I distinguish this from politeness (I still have to occasionally remind her to say hi/bye and please/thank you), or from compliance (Snowdrop, put that down please -- will not always have the effect of her putting that down; she negotiates!). This girl worries about saying or doing something hurtful.

[I should note that on the car ride home I asked her what she thought was her super strength or power. She threw the question back at me and I gave my answer. Then she said -- I guess I'd add imagination. I think I have a good imagination!]

(snow?)

Her empathetic soul makes it difficult to introduce stories or a history where people deliberately hurt each other. Not even just physically, but at the level of feelings. She can watch Disney movies where monsters chase innocents and horrible storms wreck ships and swallow up the universe, but show her a movie where someone says something intentionally mean and she runs to the art room and closes the door. At this age, my daughters already knew about the Holocaust. But Snowdrop would have an even harder time processing something so violently cruel.

For now, for her, ignorance is bliss.

Evening. Soup's on the stove. A mass of veggies and beans, a squirt of lime, a sprinkle of Parmesan. Twinkling lights, a sliver of a moon.

With love...