Snow

Snow is never something I thought I would miss. I have disliked snow since I was about 14, which also happens to be the last time I went skiing. I hate the way people drive in the snow and I hate how it makes everything WET and FREEZING. So, when I moved to Birmingham for good, I was so happy to finally be rid of snow in my life! That is, until I realized this will be my first winter, in the history of ever, without snow. And it sure doesn't feel much like winter at all.

The past two years, even though I lived in Birmingham, I got to go home for a couple of weeks at Christmastime and I always saw snow. And now this year...well I think I found the reason it was so hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit: it didn't feel much like Christmastime. In fact, it has felt closer to Halloween-time than Christmastime for what I'm used to.

Winter and snow were synonymous to me growing up. I mean, what is a winter day on the elementary playground without building huge snowmen and getting in trouble for secret snowball fights? I remember one year we spent the whole morning out on the playground trying to build a snowman with snowballs as big as we were. It took several of us little ones to push the massive mounds around the grass. We thought it was the best, and longest, recess ever. I don't know how we thought we were going to stack up that snowman but we never got to try because school got out early.

School got out early and got canceled all the time. "School canceled because of snow," is what you wanted to hear when you rushed to the T.V. in your pajamas in the morning. Yay for snow days! Does school ever get canceled in the South? One year we had an extra long Christmas break because of a blizzard. When I was in high school we had and extra long spring break for the same reason.

I remember standing at the bus stop, smoothing out the snow with my Keds to make the ground slick enough to slide on. Keds were the perfect shoe for sliding in the snow because they had absolutely no tread on the bottom. I would get a running start and then sliiiiide as far as I could across the snow covered street, loving the shiny trail my shoe left behind me. There were snow covered caves in the back yard, expeditions across the unfamiliar white terrain that made my neighborhood into a sparkling fresh mystery world and snowmen that stayed up long after the snow on the ground had melted.

I guess I always took snow for granted. I knew that there were people who didn't get snow where they lived and people who had never even seen snow; but I never thought of that as a big deal. Now I see it as a loss. There is just something about snow that makes Christmas seem more magical.

So I hope I get to go home for the holidays and see snow some year. And I hope my kids get to have at least a few White Christmas's. Here's to snow: sorry I never saw your worth.