Let it snow

Sunday, January 6, 2008
Bangor

Snow on Friday at last, none too soon for the neighborhood children who’ll play in any kind of snow, even this soaking wet kind that packs together into lethal projectiles and weighs so much that to make even a smallish snowman requires gargantuan strength. The snow started down on Thursday evening. By bedtime, it was gone. But when we woke up on Friday morning, the ground was covered with the magical stuff. Lucky for me, since I’d forbidden Reed from going outside to play in it after bedtime on Thursday, when all the neighborhood children were out throwing snowballs at each other. Reed ate breakfast and got dressed and brushed his teeth in record time and headed outdoors while it was still dark. Aside from a few hours inside in the afternoon when his friend David came inside for a few games of checkers/draughts while it was pouring rain outside, Reed was outside from dawn until dusk. He could barely keep his eyes open during dinner.

The t.v. news for Ulster was filled with scenes of cars gone off the road during the snowstorm Thursday night. Us winter-hardened Midwesterners just smile and shake our heads – as if knowing how to drive on snowy roads somehow makes us morally superior to people who live where there are palm trees!