Snow Days in the South

    Snow days in the South are perfection.Because they happen so rarely we treat them as the glorious gifts they are. Snow days mean pulling out rusty sleds, checking the supply of marshmallows, and cleaning the grocery stores out of milk and bread, though I have yet to figure out why.  What are people doing with all that milk and bread? Or is it that the milk truck doesn’t deliver when there’s impending snow? Questions that cannot be answered here, unless you know and want to share.
    We got the first snow days in a few years here this week. Sunday it was in the 50s and sunny and bright. Monday it went up even higher and Sweet Pea and I took a long walk to prepare for what may or may not be several days inside. Tuesday was freezing and schools dismissed early or didn’t open at all (though there was no snow, there was a gridlock situation in 2005 that left people stranded for hours or overnight at schools around the county. Ironically the same thing happened again in Atlanta this year. Should have been taking notes, Georgia.  We were gone before 1 o’clock and from there all we did was watch the sky. It had been cloudy most of the day, but there was no sign that anything was actually going to happen.
    “Did you see the radar? We are like an oasis.” M. told me as he pointed out that on the computer screen there were signs of snow and ice EVERYWHERE else except Raleigh. Seriously. We were the eye in the hurricane. “You’re kidding. Nothing is going to happen here and my students are going to be so disappointed.” That’s code for: WTF? I’m going to be so ridiculously unhappy if there’s no snow. I had already spent the better part of an hour trying to get SL to understand how important snow is. She was having trouble with the concept and mainly wanted to put her feet in her mouth.
    But we were not to be disappointed. The snow came. Without fanfare, it began falling softly after dark, carefully coating yards and mailboxes and tops of cars, and then, blessedly, coating the streets we had hoped were cold enough for it. It fell so quickly you could only see it looking at streetlights. I showed one very uninterested baby what was happening and then we read a story and prepped for bed.  After she went down, I spent some time looking out the window and trying to remember how it felt to get snow when I was a kid.  I hate the way the anticipation of events in our lives seems to dim as we get older. I remember how excited I got over snow, even up through college. And when I first moved to Manhattan, the year it was hit with a whopping 28 inches (yet NOTHING shut down), I spent hours out in it, in awe of how beautiful the city was (for about 5 minutes). But I’ve noticed that as I grow older, somehow the magic has been dimmed by real life. By worrying about what will happen if the power goes off. By wondering if I’ll have to go into work anyway, so maybe I shouldn’t stay up extra late. Trying to figure out how I should use an extra day at home. Clearly that is not what snow days were meant for.
     We finally got the call that our school was going to be closed the next day, and I did a little happy dance (very softly, so the baby wouldn’t wake). Then there was pajama time and the kind of sleep that comes from knowing you don’t have an alarm set. To top it off, SL slept through the night.  I got up around 4, and looked outside. The snow had stopped falling. Our world is never quieter than immediately after a snowfall. The snow is a blanket, insulating us from our everyday lives and reminding us that sometimes Mother Nature has to step in and force us to relax. I went back to bed.
     So on a random Wednesday morning, I was able to spend time snuggling with SL in my pajamas. I ate steel cut oats- the kind that take like half an hour to cook and feels so very New England.  We listened to music and played on the floor and in the afternoon we bundled her up and took her out and…. she CRIED. Looked around for about 10 seconds and had a meltdown.  I’m not sure what I thought her reaction would be, but…not that. She calmed down but didn’t really smile at all. We took a bunch of pictures and finally in the last moments of being outside I laid her down in the snow for the quintessential snow angel picture.  She was very unsure.
    During our two snowdays I probably spent about 20 minutes total outside with the baby, but those 20 minutes were so worth it. Crisp air waking us out of the cozy stupor of being inside all day, and seeing the snow as (maybe) SL saw it- heavy, white, cleansing. Another advantage of snow in the South? It’s not sticking around to become piles of gray sludge. By Saturday afternoon it was gone, only a few remnants of stubborn snowmen left. It leaves as mysteriously and silently as it appears and we return to our routines, but we are a little bit softer and quieter inside.