I’d done all I could to summon the opening-day ski gods. I did the snow dance. Got my car washed. Canceled my appointment to have my Blizzaks mounted. But in the end, we all know the only way to ensure the perfect winter storm — and an enormous bout of FOMO — is to leave town.
So, sitting at the Delta gate with my dog Riley, waiting for my final connection to Rochester, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when someone on the group text sent a screenshot of a Reddit post with the headline “PCMR announces opening day Friday, December 5.”
Someone had to take one for the team, I thought. You’re welcome.
The one saving grace was I’d recently deactivated my Instagram. At least I wouldn’t have to see all the posts and reels of my friends looking thrilled and red-cheeked at Park City Mountain opening day — even though we all know IRL they were lapping a single chaotic ribbon of Homerun while trying not to get mowed down by a bunch of stoned teenagers on snowbikes.
Riley hoovered a mess of cookie crumbs from the carpet while I stared out the window at the dry tarmac. At least it isn’t snowing here, I thought as we boarded the cramped regional jet for Rochester. In hindsight, this should’ve been a red flag: I hadn’t bothered to bring ski gear.
Forty-five minutes later, we were still on the tarmac and it was dumping.
“Sorry, folks, we’re waiting for de-icing,” the pilot said. Apparently, the perfect storm had now situated itself directly over the Detroit airport. It was following me.
Around midnight, I was finally in the car heading to my friends’ home where I’d be staying for the week. No snow here. Dry and brown as an old sweater, I thought to myself.
The next morning, I awoke to a winter wonderland that looked as glitteringly snow-covered as the final scene of the movie “Groundhog Day.” The storm had caught up with me again, effing with me, because it knew I had zero chance of taking advantage of it.
The snow in Rochester had one job: to annoy the hell out of me. At least that’s what I thought as I fishtailed through slushy roads and rush hour traffic that night. I’d picked up my mother and uncle on the way to a restaurant for a family dinner. We were running late for our reservation.
“Turn left!” my mother commanded from the passenger seat, “It’s a shortcut!”
Thirty seconds later, I clocked the speedometer at 3 miles per hour as we crawled behind — I’m not joking — a horse-drawn sleigh. Our “shortcut” had taken us directly into ground zero of a suburban holiday shopping festival. The sleigh stopped suddenly in front of us to let people off. A bunch of families waited their turn to get on, snapping pictures they’d soon be no doubt posting to Facebook and Instagram.
It was the kind of perfectly curated, don’t you wish you were here holiday moment belied only by its barely tolerable reality — wet snow, angry commuters and a line of parents and screaming kids that ran all the way down the block.
“Pull around it!” my uncle yelled from the backseat.
“No, Katie,” my mother yelled from the front seat. “Wait!”
“Katie, just go!” my uncle said. “Now’s your chance!”
I did what my uncle said.
He was my mother’s little brother. To us kids, he was old enough to know better but young enough to be cool. He’d long been an art teacher at an inner city high school. He painted a risqué mural in his bathroom that horrified my mother and grandmother just as much as it enthralled me and my siblings. He was quiet, remote and somewhat intimidating. He never tried to make us like him. We just did. We could sense he was different even before he came out to us when I was 13. And different was cool.
So I did what my uncle said and when I got older, I was delighted that he finally did what I said. I suggested he get a motorized scooter, and he did. I suggested he get a bike, and he did. After his partner of 40 years passed away, I suggested he get on Instagram and he did that, too.
Posting one of his drawings every single day, he quickly amassed a community of nearly 8,000 followers. On Instagram, my uncle’s artistic posts were a different kind of curated perfection — practiced, irreverent, disciplined and utterly human. For me, they became a daily window into his world.
Suddenly, the idea of deactivating my Instagram had a different kind of FOMO. The fear of missing out on my uncle.
Back in my friends’ sumptuous living room that night, I looked around at the perfect Christmas tree in the corner, the perfect fire in the fireplace, the perfect mantle laid with candles and pine boughs and tiny fir trees. It was Instagram design porn as titillating as the centerfold of a Design Within Reach catalog.
But this was an Instagram image with a heartbeat. Familiar and welcoming. Perfection I could actually inhabit. There was no FOMO, because instead of being on the outside, I was right there in it.
Later on, I tucked under the warmth of the pristine comforter in my perfect guest room. I didn’t even bother looking at my phone as the calming scent of Japanese quince filled the air. I turned out the light. I heard a strange noise and realized it was my little dog Riley. Throwing up. On the bed.
I grabbed some Kleenex next to the bed and frantically cleaned it up. It wasn’t much, just a little spit-up, really. And my friend had put a dark gray sheet over the bedspread, thank god. I pulled back the sheet. I noticed that despite my best efforts, a tiny stain had managed to seep through. I blotted it with a wad of tissue.
When I turned around, I noticed Riley curled in a little ball on my pillow. He was sound asleep.