snow

It’s been snowing here. Not so unusually much more or less than ever for this place, but I continue to be taken aback by the volume of it. I have only a handful of memories of snow like this in my childhood where, west of the Cascades, we only ever accumulated a few inches at most in a season, and it was mostly wet, icy, and unpleasant. If there ever was enough on the ground to form some snow-person-like shapes, we certainly took advantage.

Among my fondest snow memories: The year my aunt and uncle came to visit, and we had enough snowfall to build a snowman in the front yard. Afterward, my parents hitched a disk sled to the back of my uncle’s motorcycle, and we took turns being towed around our middle-class development at a gentle speed.

There was the year my dad woke my sister and me up in the middle of the night to go play in the snow. I must have been six or seven. I thought he was kidding, but he roused us out of bed, and we went outside and made snow angels in the moonlight while the flakes were still falling.

Maybe that same year, but definitely that same house (my memory is organized by houses), we lived on a great hill. We had a vast yard populated with fruit trees, evergreens, blackberries, and morning glories. Every night we watched the world roll away from the sun against the silhouette of the Snohomish Valley, Everett, and the Puget Sound beyond. The year that it snowed enough to cover everything and thickly ice the roads, my dad fashioned make-shift sleds out of carpet padding and thick plastic from the same carpet rolls, and we rode our scraps down the street on our hill for maybe half a mile before slowing down. It was our own rollercoaster ride as we sailed down the street, swept up in the middle where the road lifted just a bit. We flew. But not every year. Just that once.

In my memory, there were no other winters of significance until I was in college.

Already in Pennsylvania this year we have had three snow days, ushered in by three different frosty weather systems, and now this mean little dusting just when the temperatures began to tease us. None of this has been extraordinary or record setting. This last little gust shows that we may even have several more before the season is through. For me, much has changed.

Is anything so wonderful as waking up to the whole world washed white? What is more utterly transforming? Under a blanket of white, the ugliest city street is dazzling, even mine. There are no potholes. There are no oil stains. We almost cannot tell one covered car from another. Everything is leveled, but not to the ground. We are all elevated to beauty.

As a kid I had a strong sense of this. I had a strong connection to the wonder and magic of the world around me, and I understood that under such a covering of beauty all was forgiven. I suspect that this is a talent common to all children, who await the prospect of a snow day with almost as much anticipation as of a visit from Sana Clause. To a child, snow is grace.

Here’s the thing I am wrestling with: I now hate snow. I hate it! I am old, and crabby, and when the weather man says there is a storm coming, I let my head fall back, and I slump defeatedly, thinking, “Oh, great!” There is no very good reason for my negativity about this- I don’t even have to leave my house. I don’t even have to dig my car out (well, not for a morning commute, anyways). Immediately, my mind recalculates the to-do list for the coming day, factoring in things like, shovel the walk, clean up puddles of water, extra laundry (drying, mostly), and pondering the question, “Do we have enough milk?” Forget angels. Forget roller coasters. Forget a day off. Forget being let off the hook. Forget the forgiveness offered by a snow day. Instead, I will be up early, digging myself out of a dark parking space, and when I am done with that, I will find a chair or a garbage can to use in place of a bright orange cone, and I will mark what’s mine.

You know you are officially old at heart when you are irritated by snow. Because you have to get up in it, and function in it, and the magic of it all is lost on you. But I have to attest that at this moment there are, outside my window, the most voluptuous mountains of snow that have been plowed aside (for the convenience of the grownups, mind you) which have been tunneled through again and again by all warring factions of neighborhood kids in relative harmony as they carved out caves together in the parking lot. It’s a little secret city. A little magic right here on J— Street.