The snow day chronicles

By Angela Beairsto

Ah . . . January. The turkey leftovers are finally gone, the Christmas decorations have been neatly packed away, the resolutions have been made, the relatives have returned to their own homes, my husband is back behind his desk, the college kids have taken their three baskets of clean clothes back to school, and the two kids still at home have returned to their school and sports routines. I sit in my favorite chair in the kitchen by the fire and gaze outside, musing about a fresh new year ahead and enjoying the peacefulness and solitude I so appreciate when being alone in my own home. However, something just isn’t right.
Suddenly it dawns on me: I’m longing for a snow day.
“Snow day” just might be the most exciting and magical phrase in the English language, causing a child’s heart to miss a beat and an adult’s stress headache to morph into a migraine. Even as a youngster growing up in Chattanooga in the 1960s (when Chattanooga got at least a couple of good snows each year), I can remember nearly climbing out of my skin as I listened to Luther on the radio s-l-o-w-l-y reciting the local school closings. A snow day ranked right up there with Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Easter Bunny.
My four children spent their childhood winters in Cincinnati, Ohio, where we lived for 14 years. As soon as I had settled back into a New Year routine and prepared for my “long winter’s nap,” the inevitable would happen: a 5 a.m. wake-up call from the school’s Emergency Phone Tree, announcing the season’s first snow day.
With all the advancements in weather forecasting since I was a kid, there weren’t too many surprise snowfalls for my own kids. Whenever the baritone voice on the television predicted even the slightest possibility of the white stuff, my kids would be on their knees: “God bless Mom and Dad, our new puppy, the president, my teacher, and . . .  God, please let it snow tomorrow so I don’t have to go to school. Besides, I think the teachers really need a day off.”      “The teachers! Why do they need a break?” I would ask. They had two whole weeks of peace and quiet, while I cleaned the house, followed trails of cookie crumbs and candy cane fragments, slaved over dirty clothes and dishes, broke up fights over Tickle Me Elmo, and unclogged the vacuum of pine tree needles. I needed a “snow day” at home—alone!
I have to admit there were times when the weatherman totally missed his mark, when the closest thing to snow falling from the sky was a dropping from a bird flying back to his warm nest, and deep inside I longed for the reprieve of a snow day with my kids. After all, the specialness of a snow day lies not in what you do, but what you don’t do: no carpooling, no eating in the car on the way to ballet practice, no PTA meetings, teacher conferences or trips to the grocery store.
I once heard a snow day compared to someone giving you the best birthday present ever, when it’s not even your birthday. At our house, we liked to unwrap that present slowly, savoring the spontaneity as long as we could.
In Ohio, when the children were younger, I could barely contain them from bolting out the door into the newly frosted landscape. They begrudgingly sat at the counter bar first, knowing I would not let them outside without our traditional snow day breakfast: Cream of Wheat and hot cocoa full of snow white marshmallows slurped from snowman mugs. The bowls barely made it to the sink before the kids were dressed from head to toe in snow suits, boots, hats, gloves and scarves, and tripping over one another and themselves to meet the neighborhood kids on the “sledding hill”—a slope in the backyard woods with trees enough to make an interesting, but not totally unsafe, obstacle course. Luckily, there was only one unfortunate incident in all those years of snow days: a visiting friend’s broken nose.
Group sledding usually turned into neighborhood snowball fights. Only the promise of warm chocolate chip cookies drew the children back inside for a bowl of soup and a few minutes of defrosting by the fire. Before the mittens were completely dry, they were usually off again, to make a snowman. The front yard would end up a crazy racetrack of bare grass paths where the body of the snowman had been rolled. Inevitably, one of the kids was sent back into the house—usually forgetting to remove wet boots—on a scavenger hunt for carrot, coal, scarf and hat for the snow giant. (We didn’t believe in “average” snowmen at our house; it usually took one or more dads to help lift the mid-section and head onto Mr. Frosty.) The search into the woods for twigs for arms usually led to more sledding until dark.
While the kids headed upstairs for warm baths and footy pajamas, I readied our picnic blanket in the den so we could play Monopoly or watch a movie in front of the fire, while feasting on pizza. When the children went to bed, cheeks rosy from the fire as well as the cold, they once again prayed for their blessings, thanked God for the snow day, and usually prayed for another. Sometimes they got their wish, and sometimes they didn’t. I attacked the pile of wet clothes thrown into the laundry basket in the mudroom, just in case, and sat up late by the fire, watching the snow fall, silently offering up my own prayers and gratitude for snow days.
We’ve been back in Chattanooga for five years. For the first two and a half years, we found ourselves craving snow in a Southern snow drought. Only one day off—for rain! We had just about given up our dream for snow in the South when it happened: For several hours, it snowed on Signal Mountain.
We were all giddy with excitement and wanted to squeeze out every ounce of joy from every single snowflake that fell. There was a flurry of activity as my teens hauled the box of snow gear (hats, gloves, scarves, mittens) down from the attic and fought to see who could still fit into what. By the time they had eaten and properly outfitted themselves, it was getting dark and quite late. I finished cleaning the dishes and readied myself for bed, and still the kids had not come in. A glance out our bedroom window prompted me to grab my husband quickly, before he missed the magic. The snow now covered most of our yard, and there, in the warm glow of the streetlight, were my gangly teenage children, practically dancing with abandon—enjoying not a snow day, but a snow night.
It is January, and the house is quiet and clean. The front hall and mudroom are empty of the debris of snowsuits, coats, hats, gloves, scarves and wet boots. The fire is warm, but it doesn’t seem to take the chill away. I find myself longing for snowball fights, yards of bare grass paths, trails of cookie crumbs, hot chocolate mustaches, Monopoly picnics, and rosy-cheeked children. I feel the sadness and sense of longing I once felt at the end of a snow day, and I long for one more. Because anything is possible on a snow day.

Writer Angela Beairsto is the mother of four children. She lives on Signal Mountain.