Snow Days

The winters of my childhood were endless, and for children who enjoyed physical activity, the days were probably stressful and long for our parents.  On the plains of Texas, northern winds sliced through our homes and into little bodies.  While I don’t remember being cold as a youngster, I do remember backing up to the free standing gas heater to warm myself.  I was the lucky one because the heater was housed in my bedroom, but that also meant sister and brother visits which I did not particularly want when I was immersed in a book.  The kitchen was indeed the warmest room in the house as our mother seemed to always be cooking or baking.  We had a wall furnace in the family room, but we rarely gathered there as children.

Weekdays, we boarded the bus and attended school, but we did have snow occasionally, so we found ourselves underfoot at home.  Our mother tried to find different activities for us, but four children to please was not an easy task.  One year after a snow, she taught us to make snow ice cream  Our job was to trek outside and find the cleanest, whitest snow.  We joyfully bundled ourselves and spent hours finding the best snow.  We would take breaks from looking for the best snow and build snowmen and have snowball fights.  Mother was busy indoors but  she watched us from the kitchen window, preparing the cream for the snow.  Finally, with our bowls filled and our cheeks red, noses running and numbed fingers and toes, we headed back inside to help make the snow cream.  Hastily we discarded our outerwear leaving a pile of wet clothes for our mother, but she didn’t seem to mind.  The cream had cooled enough for her to pour over the snow as we gently folded the mixture together per her instructions.  Ice cream was rarely found in our freezer, so this was a luxury.

One such snow storm brought drifts at least five feet high in our backyard.  We begged and begged to go outside, but the blizzard like conditions kept us house bound for a few days.  When the northern winds stopped, our mother allowed us to play in the snow drifts.  Armed with shovels and hoes, my older sister and my brother and I began the arduous task of building tunnels in the drifts.  The snow was a perfect wet snow, so we could pack it whenever our aggressive shoveling created collapsed tunnels.  We worked like gophers all day tunneling through that snow to build our underground fortress.  Late in the day we determined it was finished (or we were just plain tired) and we sat inside the tunnel house talking and laughing unaware that night was beginning to fall.  Mother must have gotten worried as we heard her muffled yells above us   We knew we better peek out to let her know we were ok.  She laughed and said it was time to go inside to eat dinner.  We were famished, so there was not argument.

The next morning we hurriedly ate our breakfast and cleaned the kitchen, so we could get back to our fortress.  By the time we were dressed and had stepped out the back door, the sun was shining brightly, and our beautiful snow mountain was melting.  We decided that it would be fun to tromp through our tunneled work and destroy it before the sun could. Away we went running through the drifts, stopping to make and throw snowballs and to make snow angels, and dreaming of the next snow adventure.

I hope children who are lucky enough to have snow days find an adventure in the day.  Let imaginations run wild.  The act of doing will cement those moments into your memory forever. Have fun!