Snow

One morning, I woke up to find three inches of snow on my car and a forecast that predicted another three to four inches by evening, followed by temperatures dipping below zero, then more snow. Wonderful!  This means that the chances of the snow on the ground melting before the next blast of snow was nil.  With a lot of grumbling and whining, I slipped on my heavy coat, gloves and boots and went out to begin the tedious job of shoveling my walkway and then “sweeping” the snow off my car to prepare to go to work.

Back in the house, I eat a quick breakfast, shower, get dressed, again don my heavy coat, gloves and boots and trudge out into the blustery morning to go to work, saying a prayer that I would make it down the hill safely as I drive slowly down the treated, but still slippery roads of North Park.  I finally make it to the bottom of the hill with a grateful sigh and turn cautiously onto Route 40 making my way down Wheeling Hill toward my office that is located out the pike.  As I park in the lot, I again say another small prayer that I won’t fall and break a hip or both wrists trying to catch myself when I fall, and begin to walk tentatively along the treated, but still slippery roads and sidewalks into my office.

This is a typical winter morning in January or February in Wheeling, W.Va., and it seems the older I get the more I dread it.

Safe and settled in my office, praising the Lord that I made it safely, I stood gazing out my office window at the snowy morning and noted that there wasn’t even four inches of snow on the ground! All of this angst and stress over less than four inches of snow! When had winter become so loathsome to me that even four inches seemed like a major blizzard? As I pondered this thought, I ran my tongue over my front right tooth and felt the familiar chip that had been there for years and it brought back memories of a much simpler time in my life when I was a little girl in the late 1950’s, a time when “a snow day” filled me with excitement and wonder.  I remember wintery evenings when I would watch out the window as the snow fell and covered the ground and then, just for fun, lean out our back door and stick a yard stick in the snow to measure how deep it was getting. It wasn’t unusual for the snow to be over a foot. A foot of snow nowadays makes the city stand still! I can’t remember school ever being closed because of snow back then. Of course, most of us went to local neighborhood schools and didn’t have to ride buses as the children do now. On the days when we didn’t have to go to school and I would awake to a beautiful winter wonderland, I remember that feeling of pure excitement as I hurried to put my coat, boots and gloves on to go outside and plow my little body through the untouched snow to make snow angels, build a snowman, to have a snow ball fight and sled ride.

I would grab my sled and meet my friends at our favorite sled riding hill. In my neighborhood, it was a dirt road that winded downhill around a parking lot that belonged to a local business. I can’t remember that business owner ever complaining about us using that road for sled riding. He did keep a chain across the entrance on the weekends, but we thought it was just to keep vehicles out of the area!  We would prop the chain up with a stick and ride our sleds underneath it. One of our favorite things to do was to make a train with our sleds. This was accomplished by lying flat on your sled and hooking your feet into the front of the sled behind you. There were usually more kids sledding than we had sleds so we used to buddy up. When we would make the sled train, we would have to pile on top of each other to share a sled. Because I was small I was usually the one who road on top of somebody. One day, I was riding on the back of my one of my older playmates on the second sled. The leader of the sled train was a neighborhood kid who had the kind of personality that made him think it might be funny to yank the stick out and try to knock some of the other kids off of their sleds tailing down behind him. As soon as he pulled the stick out the chain dropped in front of me, caught me right across the mouth and knocked me completely off my friend’s back onto the road. When the others came back up the hill, they found me sitting in the snow, bleeding with a busted lip and near tears. They walked me home where my mom, who no doubt took it all in stride by this time in my childhood and also being the youngest of four kids, cleaned off the blood, examined my wound, discovered my front chipped tooth, comforted me because I was more upset about the chipped tooth than hurting from my busted lip, made sure I wasn’t seriously injured and released us to run gleefully back outside to play in the snow.

We would spend the day sledding down that snow covered road and as the day wore on the road became increasingly icy, making each trip down the hill faster and faster until it seemed we were flying down that road just to skid in sideways at the bottom! Then we would walk back up, slipping, sliding and falling, laughing, having fun, just to fly back down again. All day long…nonstop, ignoring the cold…until our mothers would call for us to come in to eat. But we wouldn’t stay inside long before we were putting those damp clothes back on again and running back out into the wondrous snow…to squeeze as much fun out of it as we could before we had to go in for the night.  We didn’t want to waste a minute of enjoying it because we knew that it would be melted away the next day.

I suppose enjoying the snow that much is a pleasure that most of us leave behind us as we grow older.  We have jobs and other important things that we need to do during the day that the snow and icy roads interfere with and make it more difficult.  There are more school closings now because of the weather because children are transported to their schools by a bus, from kindergarten through high school.

I do admit that I still enjoy the beauty of a new fallen snow as long as I don’t have to leave my house or drive anywhere in it, just stay cuddled up in my easy chair, dressed in my comfy clothes, safe and warm, and only view it from the window.

Not as much fun, I know, but at least I won’t break a hip!