Snow Day

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood. — Andy Goldsworthy

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Photo by Sina Katirachi on Unsplash

Friends,

I don’t know about you, but I need a break from the news. The State of the Union Address happened, I guess (I didn’t watch), creating a deceitful circus about something serious, which is to say the sorry and worrying condition of the United States. Jesse Jackson died, leaving a huge hole in the pantheon of justice workers. ICE continues to round people up without warrant and without appropriate warrants. The military buildup in the Middle East, engineered to divert our attention from the Epstein scandal, is having a direct impact on my family. (One Air Force family member — a mother of very young children — has had her deployment to the Middle East continued indefinitely, leaving her to be a video conferencing mom for the foreseeable future.)

And, well, the list goes on. It’s all very wearying.

Not that there aren’t things to celebrate. There are. The recent Supreme Court ruling on tariffs. The bipartisan counterprogramming for the State of the Union Address. The ongoing creativity and dedication of those protesting the current regime in Washington. The U. S. women’s hockey team.

Oh, and Julia Spencer-Fleming has finally released a new murder mystery.

But, I need to recalibrate my joy meter at the moment. So, let’s talk about snow. I love a good snowstorm. I love them now, and I particularly love the memories they bring. In fact, one of the earliest snapshots I have of me shows me, a toddler, seated in a newly shoveled pathway of deep, deep snow. A cat is sitting there with me, too. Of course there is a cat.

Photo by Jasmin Schuler on Unsplash

As I started to write this post, flakes were drifting down from the sky. Not much snow accumulated, but many in the Northeast got pummeled by snow during the last few days. Over three feet of snow fell in Providence, Rhode Island! News reports say the storm rivaled the Blizzard of ‘78, and that’s saying something.

My part of Maine was promised a good storm. We were issued constant blizzard warnings, with projected accumulations of between 8 and 12 inches. Events got canceled. School got canceled. People hunkered down. I brought in a heap of firewood and made sure our generator had oil. I assessed our food situation and decided we could make do with what we had on hand. We were ready.

Monday morning the wind picked up, swirling tiny snowflakes all around me as I walked home from having coffee with some neighbors. The strong wind and those tiny flakes seemed to be harbingers of the robust storm the weather forecasters were promising. I trudged home with visions of a magnificent storm followed by the hush and beauty of snow cover. News reports coming from the south seemed in line with my hopes and expectations.

Alas. We got a paltry amount of snow.

No hush, no clouds of snow clinging to tree branches. Just enough for the snowplow to heap up a goodly berm at the end of the driveway. Enough to make clearing the snow necessary. (If you are someone who pushes wheelchairs around, you know what I mean. You can’t just drive over the snow when what you are driving is a wheelchair.)

Despite the relatively anemic outcome of the storm here, the hysterical buildup sure brought back a lot of memories of snow days throughout my life. One of my brothers often says, “The best phrase in the English language is ‘no school, all schools, all day.’” Like me, he remembers waking up to a deep snow cover, turning on the radio, and discovering our town had canceled school for the day. Oh, the excitement of an extra, unexpected gift landing in our lives first thing in the morning!

Snow forts. Snow caves. Snowmen. Snow angels. Snowball fights. Sledding. Skiing. And, more than anything, the sheer glory of having an unexpected day off! That’s a childhood joy that will always stay with me.

Maybe it’s my dotage talking (okay, it probably is my dotage talking), but things seem different now. For one thing, meteorology has improved by leaps and bounds since I was a child. Notwithstanding the fact that the big storm of 2026 was poorly predicted for my area, weather predictions are usually far more reliable nowadays than they were back in the day. I cannot remember a time when school was ever canceled the day ahead of a storm. No, sir. You might have gone to bed hearing reports of possible snow. You might even have been outside and seen a ring around the moon and felt the sting in the air before retiring for the evening. But you had to wait to see what morning would bring because you really couldn’t trust the weather forecast. If you woke up to a considerable amount of snow, you knew to turn on the radio to listen to the cancellations.

Nowadays — at least in my town — school gets cancelled, town offices often close, and other events are postponed long before the first flakes even fall from the sky. It takes hardly anything for my town to cancel school. Maybe that’s the result of living in our litigious society — towns worry about lawsuits if somebody falls and breaks a bone. But that knee-jerk caution takes away from some of the magic of a really big storm. And reliable weather predictions take away some of the awe, too. I wonder, too, if snow days were rarer when I was a kid than they are now, because we had to wait for actual evidence of snow on the ground before school got called off.

Even the way we learn of cancellations is different now. Sure, maybe cancellations still get announced on the radio and on television chyrons. But my guess is that a lot of people get notified by a text message on their cell phones. That might be a better system, but I wonder if some of the excitement has been lost with the advent of improved technology. In the old days, you had to wait while the broadcaster waded through the list of all the towns with cancellations until your town was called.

And then — the pure joy of the occasion!

When I was little, I cannot recall ever being sent home early because of a snowstorm. I imagine the school district thought — rightly — that there would be no guarantee of having adults available to greet children who arrived home early. The only exception I can recall had nothing to do with snow at all. It was when President Kennedy was assassinated. I was pretty little, so my memory may be suspect. But here’s how I see that day in my mind’s eye. My teacher, who was also the principal in our little 4-room school, had been out of the room attending to some kind of principal business. Suddenly, she staggered in bearing a giant, old radio in her arms. My teacher was 187 years old, and she seemed to be teetering on her high heels, with the weight of that old radio setting her off-balance.

“I just learned the President has been shot,” she announced as she plugged the radio in and hunted around through a sea of static until she was able to dial in a station. Just as the static disappeared, the newscaster’s voice boomed out, “We’ve just learned that the President is dead. The. President. Is. Dead.”

We sat there stunned. Next thing we knew, the buses showed up and carted us all home so that we could join the entire rest of the nation that was glued to their black-and-white television sets.

But leaving school early because of snow? Nope. Once you were in school, you were there until the final bell. None of this mamby-pamby, maybe-we-ought-to-release-everyone-early stuff.

Things were usually that way when my son was a kid, too. There was one notable exception, however. One day, when my son was in first grade, snow started to fall in the late morning. I was out for appointments and errands. When I returned home a couple of hours later, two or three inches of snow had accumulated on the ground. I pulled into the yard and noticed little boot prints leading up to the house. Without my knowing, the school had decided to close early. I don’t know what possessed the bus driver to let a little first grader off the bus all by himself on a pretty much deserted country road, when there was no car in the yard to indicate the presence of a grownup. I don’t think I ever made it from my car to the door as quickly as I did that day! When I got inside the house, I found my son watching Mr. Rogers in the living room while chomping on an apple he had gotten out of the refrigerator. He proudly reported that, all by himself, he had retrieved the key we kept hidden outside, and he had unlocked the door and let himself in the house. I was a mess, but my son was quite pleased with himself.

Other memories of his childhood snow adventures are more fun than that one. When he was really little he loved to go outside and just dig around in the snow, creating piles around the yard. One year, we got so much snow that we were worried about the weight of it on the roof over our laundry room. We lived in an old farmhouse in those days — one of those houses that had been added on to in the most higgledy-piddledy fashion. So, when we got concerned enough about that roof, we considered the best way to shovel it off. Seeing as the best access was through our son’s bedroom windows, we decided to haul snow shovels inside and then climb out the bedroom window to shovel.

The huge pile of snow on top of our laundry room roof, as seen through our son’s bedroom window.

Of course, our son wanted to be involved in the project. And, of course, we wanted to take every caution to make sure nobody fell off the roof while shoveling. So, my husband constructed harnesses out of sturdy ropes — one for him and one for our son. Once the harnesses were in place, he tied them to our son’s bunk bed. Then, the two of them crawled out the window and shoveled. I imagine that’s one childhood memory that will always stay with our son:

Shoveling the roof. If you look closely, you can see the harness around our son’s legs. You will also notice neither my husband nor my son is wearing a jacket. Shoveling snow is a warming experience!

When my son was in high school, a storm rolled in during the school day. I drove to the school to pick him up when classes let out, as I sometimes did. (We lived about a mile from the school, so he was a walker. When the weather was bad, I often drove him if I was home.) At least 5 inches of snow had fallen. Presumably to be helpful, a snowplow had already taken a spin through the teachers’ parking lot, but that actually meant the teachers’ cars had all been plowed in. Teachers were trying to clear the snow from their cars with no equipment other than the gloves on their hands, and their cars were getting stuck as they tried to back over the snow berm. At least one of the teachers was recovering from a recent heart attack. We had a snow shovel and broom in the trunk of our car, so I said, “Let’s go help.” My son and I spent some enjoyable time helping teachers to dig their cars out of the snow. It felt good to be outside in the winter air, to be moving our bodies, and, above all, to be helpful.

I am well aware of all the pitfalls of snow. Yes, driving can be hazardous. Yes, the snow eventually turns dirty and ugly. Yes, a big storm creates no end of havoc and inconvenience — and even danger sometimes. Yes, snow can transform to ice and become perilous to traverse. And, yes, the winter cold can seem endless. All of those things are true. But, when I think back over my life, I can come up with lots of memories of snow day fun. I can recall many times in the past — and even currently — when going out to shovel has created the opportunity for neighborly visits. And, just like the little toddler I once was, sitting there in the snow with a cat beside me, I can muster wonder when a good storm comes our way, and I can still love the quiet and beauty a snowstorm leaves in its wake.

As the saying goes, “if you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy, but the same amount of snow.” In that spirit, I offer both a poem I love and the song, “Snow Day,” by my friend, Jud Caswell. I hope you enjoy both of them!

On the Necessity of Snow Angels for the Well Being of the World by Grace Butcher

Wherever there is snow, I go,
making angels along the way.
Luckily angels have no gender
and are easier to make
than you might think.

All you have to do is let go,
fall on your back,
look up at the sky as if in prayer.
Move your arms like wings.
Move your legs to make a robe.
Rise carefully so as to do no harm,
and walk away.

All the angels along the path behind you
will sparkle in sunlight, gleam under the stars.

In spring the angels will be invisible
but really they are still there,
their outlines remain on the earth
where you put them, waiting
for you and the snow to return.

Keep walking,
towards the next beautiful thing
you will do.

Snow Day by Jud Caswell (Take a listen!)

Love, Sylvia