Snow Days!

We finally received our first big snow of the season (and the largest in several years) on Friday. I believe I have heard reports that we received approximately 4 inches of snow in addition to some ice.

My children have both loved the snow. It snowed once last year, but Ellie did not see it as she was too young to go out in it. So this was her first experience with the white stuff. I wondered what her reaction would be to the cold, wet mystery substance. She loved it. She wanted to stay out in it indefinitely. After watching Hardy and I throw snowballs at each other, she even tried to throw snow at us. Hardy of course was overjoyed with the snowfall. He is almost five and is at the age when he remembers snow from the past and remembers how much fun he had in it before. I wasn't sure he was ever going to come back inside, but we did eventually manage to entice him back into the warmth.

I myself am a snow miser, although I have not always been a snow miser. As a child I loved the snow. I remember we actually had some big snowfalls when I was a kid. My best friend lived in my neighborhood, and I remember trudging to her house to play. It was more fun to play at her house because her family had sleds (due to the parents being Indiana transplants), they knew how to build snow forts and stage epic snowball fights, and she had 3 siblings to play in the snow with. I fondly remember playing in the snow for hours and the battles we had there. I remember the hot cocoa her mom would make for us, and the feeling that all was right in the world.

I became a snow miser when we lived in Illinois. The first winter there it seemed as if it snowed incessantly. The first big snow was on Christmas Eve, and after that, the snow did not melt until the end of March. It was the most depressing sight, to see mounds of dirty snow wherever you looked. The terrain there was flat, and the gray snow mixed with the gray horizon in ways that only exacerbated the loneliness I felt in that alien land. After that winter I never trusted snow again. Snow was no longer a fun distraction. It was an malevolent force that tried to pull everything under its grip. It was unending, unyielding in its determination to make life seem as gray as the dirty snow itself.

There was one snow when I was a child, before I was 10, that has always stood out to me. It started snowing on a Sunday afternoon, and by nightfall there were several inches. I was in our living room, reading a book (the activity which took most of my time as a child) when I heard noises outside. Looking out, I saw all sorts of people gathered in the street. Bundling up, we went outside to discover a disparate set of adult neighbors, as giddy as children at the snow. Some had brought trash can lids, some had cardboard boxes, some had cooler lids. All gathered together to gleefully sled down the hill in front of my house. I'll never forget that moment of a group of adults who did not know each other, gathered together in fellowship over the snow. After that evening, everyone returned home and normalcy returned. No friendships were born that night, but a memorable evening was shared by all. If there had been more moments like this in Illinois, moments when people come together to enjoy a childlike moment together, despite differences in age, religion, creed, or race, I would have learned to like snow. For now I will just watch my children enjoy the snow and try to see it through their eyes. To look at it as a fun distraction from the winter doldrums.