The Magical Power of the Snow Day
Reflections on childhood and a story about an accident
In winter, I experience a particular kind of ache these days.
It’s not a bad knee from a football injury. It’s a kind of dull, bruising ache that comes from longing for something from childhood. It’s elusive and unnamable but snow is always falling in my memory.
I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina in a small town called Boone, population 3,333 at the time if you don’t count the college students at Appalachian State. Snow in a small Southern town is not like snow in Michigan. It’s not a relentless obstacle to be endured. It’s a magical event that hushes the world into a still reverie and sends an electric current through all school-age children who wake up at 5 A.M. to begin dialing the number on the rotary phone in the kitchen to see if school will be canceled. It almost always is but the historically capricious nature of the decision by the school board escalates the drama. Between the years of 1977 and 1984, you would find me dialing over and over and getting a busy signal until the one time my call made it through and I would hear the scratchy recording of the superintendent’s voice like he was whistling around a mouthful of gravel: “Schools in Watauga County will… (he seemed to pause for an eternity here, obviously relishing his power before delivering the goods) be closed today due to inclement weather.”
What followed was a pure dopamine rush of joy that I could feel all the way down to my toes. Like every other kid on my street, I would bundle up in a toboggan, mittens, and a scarf I only had occasion to use a couple of times a year. I have an early memory of not having snowboots and my mom putting plastic bread bags over my tennis shoes with rubber bands to cinch them at my calves. I would stay out in the snow for hours sledding and building snow forts with my friends until my wool hat was crusted with heavy pebbles of ice and my fingers and toes were numb.
Eventually, I would relent and go back inside where there would be a fire, some hot chocolate, and possibly a game of Scrabble. On those best days in my memory, my two older brothers didn’t sleep in, but instead came out with me and played like their younger selves.
The snow day is the embodiment of that longing, that ache I feel for the innocence of childhood and the closeness of family. I miss my young parents. I miss my young children. I miss my young brothers. I miss my young self. It is precarious to be just over the mid-point of this life looking back and afraid to look too far into the future.
This week, I’ll share a short story I published exactly a year ago when I was working through this snow ache. It’s not a nostalgic story, but a story of a chance meeting on a treacherous road between two men at opposite ends of life. I’ve released it from behind the paywall so everyone can read or listen for free.
What’s your relationship with snow?
How does winter affect you? Do you have a powerful memory where snow plays a central role? Share it with me in the comments.
My little brother and I were obsessed with snow and winter. We had a decent hill in the backyard and would go sledding. But we didn't just sled in the winter. One year, we were so impatient for winter to return, we got dressed in our snow suits and went sledding outside. In the summer. I have a picture somewhere commemorating the event.
I remember lying in bed on snowy mornings and waiting for my mother to come upstairs and tell us we could sleep in. Or even better, she'd start making pancakes and bring us breakfast in bed on those days. As a teenager, I would wake up to the radio, and would wait for the DJ to read the "list" of closings. In college, they'd literally have to call a state of emergency for the campus to shut down, but it was pretty magical the one or two times that happened.
Now, as a parent - we get an email, a text, and a phone call from the district when there's a snow day. But I ignore all of them and wait for my teacher husband to share the news with me. :-)
Snow affects me negatively in almost every way, except perhaps a brief period around the holidays when the hushed nights it brings are the only escape from the cacophony of friends, family, and capitalism.
I have no hobbies for the snow, it is only an impediment and inconvenience in nearly every facet of life.
Yet I can’t escape it.
Oh well, back to the happy light and drugs.