So who knows what we are getting, but we are getting a storm. It is just one of those winters.

I do not have photos that are digital of the “Blizzard of 1996” or “The Blizzard of 1978.” But I remember both.

I was turning 14 the spring following the 1978 snow. I remember I built a snow igloo at the edge of my parents’ driveway. It was fun and I could fit inside….but we were not allowed to linger inside because my parents were worried what would happen if it collapsed. It had a bench made of snow inside.

The 1996 snow I also remember. Back then I had an English Springer Spaniel we had to dig a potty path for that was like shoulder high to me on either side. I remember everyone scrambling to find snow plow people, because that was a storm that snow plow guys didn’t show up for. I remember my parents’ then usual people saying “Sorry, just too much snow.“

During 1996 finding snow plow people became like a vision quest and no one wanted to share who they used for fear they would not get plowed out. The other thing about 1996 is I remember people scrambling to get snow away from houses when the thaw started because people were having their basements flood and basement windows cave in from snow. Friends of my parents had a total disaster on their hands because they were downhill from other properties and the snow melting and moving literally did blow lower level windows in. That surpassed the crazy snow of 1987 which no one talks about any longer.

Now 2010 I remember. First Snowmageddon and Snowpocalypse of February, 2010. I was living on the Main Line still and we had an indoor fundraiser planned for First Friday Main Line that first February Friday that we had to cancel. That was February 5, 2010.

I remember it was starting to snow when I went out to dinner with friends and a bad past relationship. We went to a restaurant called “Auspicious” on Cricket Ave in Ardmore. That was the night the first blizzard of 2010 began and also the night my entire life changed. We decided to have a snow night dinner in Ardmore with two other couples. It was a “How bad could it get so fast, let’s have dinner” thing.

It had started to snow when we went to Ardmore, and we stopped first at the state store for a bottle of wine. The restaurant was a BYOB. It’s weird what you remember, but I remember of all the weird things that former Eagles coach Dick Vermeil was in the Ardmore Wine & Spirits store doing a wine tasting of his vineyard’s wines. That was the first time I remember seeing him promoting his vineyard. I saw people I knew in the store, including people I had worked on the now-postponed event along with a woman who worked in my friend’s shop.

I remember dinner being nice, and going outside and the snow was coming down fast and furious. There was already a few inches on the ground when we exited the restaurant. What I remember next is the contrast of the quiet whooshy sound of falling snow and my ex flipping out on me in the parking lot because I had accidentally opened the car window of his car while he was cleaning snow off the car. (Mind you he drove a Mazda, not a Benz.)

“You will ruin the motors of my windows!” he screamed at me.

There was already like 5″ of snow on the ground if not more. Dinner was not that long, so it was amazing how fast snow was falling. I remember the lights of Lancaster Avenue blinking like it was past midnight (I do not believe it was even 9:30 PM), and the falling snow and cars sliding all over as we drove home. We kept fishtailing, and not a little, a lot.

As we drove home, my ex screamed at me most of the way home and I remember the combination of all of that being actually rather frightening. I also remember a passing thought of “I can’t do this anymore. If I get home safely, this is over.”

I got out of the car in my driveway, and as I shut the car door he took off. It was in that blizzard I was literally abandoned with his dying dog with me. It was sort of a Lifetime TV moment. Only it was my life and slightly surreal when it happened. It was an odd and hard thing to have happen, but what do you do? You change the locks and move on. And you honor the last few months of a very old dog’s life who was so truly sweet. Months later a friend said to me that God had done a lift out. She was so right. And the truth was, I was never super upset. What happened, happened for the betterment of my life.

Life goes on and you move forward. And lots of snow, once again, got dumped in the river.

Then came December, 2010. My brother in law died on December 22, 2010 of peritoneal mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer of the abdominal lining. He had been diagnosed barely 3 1/2 weeks earlier. My sister was suddenly a young widow with two kids.

In the midst of planning the funeral came the blizzard of December, 2010 that crippled New York City. I remember walking up Park Avenue on the Upper East Side the morning the snow stopped. Instead of being filled with multiple lanes of cars on both sides, Park Avenue was snow filled, not plowed and people like myself walked in the middle of a temporarily car and bus deserted New York City street. And it was quiet. New York City was so silent in the snow.

It was the craziest feeling being able to stroll in the middle of a snow clogged Park Avenue . The weird juxtaposition of knowing you were on one of the busiest streets of one of the most populated cities, yet there I was strolling like it was a country road. I remember looking up at all the snow-laden buildings that create that multi-billion dollar canyon of Park Avenue. The buildings are so large, and humans so small. It’s funny but for a moment I felt like that little child I once was being pulled on a sled by my mother.

Then we all have the memory of the ice storm of 2014. February. No power for close to 10 days. We didn’t move for days. By the time we were into the week mark without power it was a little like Little House on the Prairie around here. You take a lot of things for granted when you don’t have power.

Cheers went up when the Calvary (PECO) got to us to restore power in 2014. My husband decided during that storm I was too much of a “city girl.” I probably still am. But there were moments after that ice storm that were just breathtaking in the majesty of Mother Nature.

It appears to be another very snowy winter for this winter. I will admit that the thought of another big snow and ice storm is not my favorite idea for the weekend. Stay safe this weekend.