SnowWhat?
OK kids! Here's the corncob pipe! The button nose! Two coal soon-to-be-eyeballs...all we need is, yes, snow. OK, and a bit of willingness. As it is now, two hours after the magic scroll-across-the-TV screen, the child who would be in science class now is lying in bed listening to his iPod without the slightest intention of going outside.
Who can blame him? Certainly not Mom, who sits here in an oversize sweatshirt reheating her coffee every five minutes or so, listening to HER iPod and trying to get some work done.
Still...her mind drifts back to the magic of childhood snow days...when you wake up and your feet are cold when they touch the floor. You look outside and see the slightest whisper of snow on the ground and have the teeniest of flashes thinking....what if? What if?
You're shivering a little -- with cold or optimistic anticipation, who knows? You smell almost-burned toast and go into the kitchen to eat your oatmeal and the radio is on and the announcer is calling out the school closings. They're in alphabetical order, and if you never paid attention to your ABCs, you can bet you do right now.
And then you hear it. Your school. Closed. All day long. You run into the living room and the good news is confirmed at the bottom of the TV screen.
You call your friend two doors down and you meet outside. You're freezing, but laughing like hyenas and trying to gather enough snow in your wet mittens to make a snowball to push down her turtleneck sweater.
By noon, after you've burned the roof of your mouth gulping Campbell's tomato soup and wolfing down a grilled-cheese sandwich, you rush back outside. There's still hardly any accumulation. Still, the snow falls. And you snatch it up, practically as it drops from the sky, determined to build a snowman. One that wobbles on the brown grass, one that will be gone by the time school would be let out.
But there is no school. Today's a snow day.