Snow Down

Let's talk about snow. I love it for many reasons. For me, it's all or nothing. Give me a blizzard. I like to shovel it. Yes, especially when it's newly packed, untrodden, smooth. As I scoop it up and toss it, I'm reminded of white icing on a stacked wedding cake, so pure and sweet. Snow is delicious.

Am I on a diet? No. I was just shoveling a path to my mailbox today and thinking how snow makes the landscape look so much more beautiful in the winter. Sticking to the frames of houses and naked trees, it illuminates the lines of every structure and plant. It covers the spots in my fence that need repair, the leaves I never raked, the barren garden. A real snowstorm is the only one worth while. It has the power to force life to a halt. Snow is a trillion white sticky notes falling from the sky on which God has written,

"Slow Down!"

I was born in a snow storm. When I was under the age of ten I remember high piles of new fallen snow in my yard. So much white that the road disappeared and my father would walk us down to the the hill near Robert Moses Causeway. We'd stamp down the street in boots and layered clothes pulling red plastic sleds. The sounds were muffled, and suburbia transformed into a magical white crystal forest.

Back home I'd lay my gloves and hat on the radiator and then sit on top of the pile. There's nothing like a seat of old-fashioned hot pipes. My feet were thawed, my cheeks ruddy from the cold. The only logical thing to do next was watch television and eat popcorn. Life is good.