Sunday, March 1, 2015

Where are the Snowdays of yesteryear

The snow melted in Dallas today, the snow that fell all day Friday.  After two days on the ground, it was slushy and grey.  It had lost its luster.

There is something pathetic about snow that has stuck around for too long.  It melts and re-freezes, changes texture and color, becomes something entirely different.  Little brown tips of dead grass begin to poke through like hairs on an unshaven crotch.  It gets even worse on that last day, when the last bit of white gives way to mud, to dirty puddles.  There are a few hidden spots of ice on the road still, and a few dashes of white in shady, sheltered places, that only serve to magnify the changes all around them.

It may seem strange, but some of my happiest memories as a child were not birthdays or holidays, but snow days.  I remember cold, breathless nights as snow began to fall, watching local news to see if tomorrow would be one of the two or three days a mild amount of winter weather would grind North Texas to a halt.  That pure expectation gave way to pure joy when I woke up in the morning to a blanket of snow.  Going back to bed, to sleep a few more hours before building a snowman, that is as happy as I can recall being.

Even in college, I loved snow days.  The fact that I probably was going to skip class anyway did little to temper my excitement at class being cancelled.  It was that same excitement, only with sex, alcohol, and hundreds of people looking for snowball fights.


But things change.  I hear people say that adults feel less than children, usually with a metaphor about thickness of skin.  I have never believed that.  Maybe they feel in a different way, but not less.  But I do know that when I woke up Friday morning to fat flakes of snow falling, I wasn’t excited.  I felt nothing.  I lost the ability to taste the strongest flavor of joy I have ever known.  Maybe something will come along to replace it.  I’m sure something will.  But today, I’m just feeling cold.