As I write this, snow is falling outside the window. As government employees, both Ms. Boss and I have the day off for Martin Luther King Day, but it has a bit of that ‘snow day’ feel to it. As an ‘essential employee’, I never get the privilege of skipping work because of bad weather. As nice as today is, I do not get to share my children’s anticipation of another snow day tomorrow.
The house I grew up lay just off a minor state highway. On nights that snow was forecast, I used to lie awake and listen to the noises the cars made as they drove by. I listened intently hoping that the sound of tires on pavement would disappear meaning the snow was getting thicker and thicker. The sound of nothing but a loud muffler passing across the thick snow was absolutely glorious. Only then would I stomach listening to the nearby elevator music station for the announcement I so wanted to hear.
My children don’t have to listen to the radio or watch television or even surf the web to find out if school’s closed. The school district robocalls us… at 5:00 in the morning… when ‘essential personnel’ who don’t care about snow days would rather be sleeping.
One of the kids in my neighborhood once convinced me that I shouldn’t track through the snow in the yard. He was convinced that if we left it alone, it would blow and drift in the road and cause school to be cancelled. His logic seemed sound at the time.
Snow days meant sledding when I was a young lad. I’d dress in my snow pants, puffy jacket, moon boots, and toboggan and walk the sled my father had as a boy a half a mile away to the top of the hill in my subdivision. The rural township my parents lived in didn’t plow the neighborhood streets then leaving the residents to their own devices. After a few hearty souls managed to make their way up the hill, the snow would be compacted on the street with very little traffic willing to follow. What was treacherous to adults was a treasure to me. With a good running start, I could ride my sled down the middle of the snow-covered street for almost a quarter of a mile. Teary eyed with a face full of snow and snot at the end, I would turn right around, march up the hill, and do it again. The times I remember most fondly, however, were the times that my father went with me. With both of us on the sled, we went farther, we went faster, we created some of my fondest memories of the man. It was glorious. I’ve tried to recreate these times with my kids, but the old sled is gone, the township plows the street, and there’s just too many distractions inside to walk miles in the snow.
My fondest snow memory as an adult is quite a bit different. The Boss family once lived in a warmer state that did not handle snow removal well. As snow fell deeply at work – a place, I might add, where I was once again ‘essential personnel’ – my employer offered accommodations at a local motel for those that had a sizable commute. I thought for a split second about taking them up on the offer, but made the decision based on where I truly wanted to be. The first forty-eight miles of my commute took two hours. The next mile of my commute took one and a half hours but left me a mile short of home. Knowing that I would not get any closer, I parked my car in a parking lot and began walking the rest of the way home.
Two things are etched in my memory about that evening. First, I remember short-cutting across a field as the storm clouds parted. The moon that shone that night transformed the pristine, knee-deep snow all around me from an treacherous obstacle to a thing of beauty. Second, as I walked in the door after my ordeal, Ms. Boss helped me out of my wet clothes, robed me in a warm blanket, and embraced me. I was home for seven hours before I had to retrace my steps back to work, but that singular moment was worth it.