Snow Day

I imagine it's Spring Cleaning in heaven. You can feel the peace coming quietly down with the snow, which must be bits of angels' wings. It's so hard to watch everything turning quietly white and imagine that it's actually wet and cold.

We've done the snowy things you do. We made snow-cream at lunchtime, and the kids are outside now with dad, building the biggest snowman ever. Baby is standing stock-still, crying, "NOOOOOO!" Which actually means "snow," but he refuses to walk in it. Until dad moved him, he simply stood in the doorway, where he got dragged out with everyone else. Now he's sitting happily on a dry porch chair, swigging hot tea from a sippy cup & watching everyone else roll, flop, & fall in the mysterious stuff he happily licked out of his bowl earlier.

On a day so full of good will toward men and peace on earth, how can there still be so much angst, even in my own household?

We've been sick for a week, and the house shows it. We've got that cooped-up feeling going, and the remainders of head colds that can bring short tempers. But it's something more.

It never snows in Texas—maybe an inch every three years here in DFW. We've got close to 4" today. It's the most snow I've seen in Texas in my life, and I've been here the whole time. A neighbor walked by, full of the joy of the miracle, and grinning, he told the kids, "Better enjoy it today! Because it won't come around again any time soon!"

I think that's exactly it. It's the pressure of a once-in-a-lifetime snow. It's the same pressure that we get raising kids. How many times have you heard, "They grow up fast—before you know it, they'll be gone!"

And I have taken the advice so seriously, that in trying not to miss anything, sometimes I miss everything. The pressure of tomorrow, of today being gone, becomes so much that I miss today as much as the person who forgot to look at all.

Sometimes a snow day needs to be just a snow day. Maybe it will be the only one like it in our lifetimes, but that is food for reflection on another day. Today is for snowball fights and strangely shaped snowmen and the icy, crunchy, shapey feel of snow and its limitless possibilities.