Snow Days

Do snowy days make you introspective? They do me. Maybe because snow is such a novelty in our area of southern Illinois. Everything comes to a halt. Since our rural infrastructure (that seems an oxymoron) is not prepared to handle the slightest abundance of white fluff or ice, school districts, daycares, social agencies, churches, government, and colleges shut down. Many of us hunker down, drinking more coffee than usual, living vicariously through frosty windows, as birds seem busier working on seeds in feeders. Excitement builds as breathtaking crystals float together in harmonic conspiracy, to change the landscape and insulate sound. And it makes our hearts happy. I am a passive enjoyer of snow. I want it to stay in place without intrusion, as long as possible. I feel let down when footprints, tire tracks, and plows mar its beauty.

I roll the tape in my head back past hikes on snowy trails, skiing with our children, watching our seventeen year-old Venezuelan exchange son playing like a small child full of wonder of his first snow. I rewind snowy days of deer hunting, sledding and cocoa, trick-or-treating with cousins from the back of a truck as snowflakes began covering us, to our children and dogs seeing their first snows. And I go back to my first memory of building a snowman.

We lived in a little two-story red asphalt-sided house and I remember watching out our front window as magic fell from the sky. We overbundled and went outside once it stopped. I was awestruck when my parents showed me how to roll the cold, wet Playdough into growing spheres; how they had to be smooth as possible, even as twigs and rocks began to cling to the last few rolls. From two small round mounds, a man began to emerge. There wasn’t enough snow to complete his head, so Mother rushed into the house to improvise. She searched under the kitchen sink until she found just the right thing. She began drawing with Magic Marker upon a gallon pickle jar. Eyes, nose, smiling mouth, just as if bits of coal had been lined into an upward curve. We went out and proudly placed it onto the visitor’s upper body. He was perfect!

I couldn’t get enough of him. I spent hours, days, gazing at the backside of “Frosty” from our window. Our magical man stayed as long as the sun would allow and I saw as he grew smaller and smaller, until the only evidence he had ever existed was the glass head left on the brown ground, smiling.

Yes, snow days are so much more than attempting to push the dangerous nuisance into dirty piles along the sides of a highway. They hold very precious memories.

(Photo by Click and Learn Photography on Unsplash)