Random Musings

Remembering...

Slow and easy today, just the way I like it. It snowed finally, and it stuck. The grass, the pine tress and the limbs of the hardwoods. shrubs, and cars are all covered in white, but it won't be that way long. It's not cold enough for long enough. By morning, things will be back as they were.

I am sitting here in the window, looking out at it all. This is the best place for me on days like this. For me, the beauty of snow is in the visual. I don't need to be up close and personal with it.

I remember growing up in Michigan where winters can be unpredictable, and at times brutal, but always frigid.

I remember....

...praying for snow days
...watching from the living room window as the snow fell. Even back then, it was mostly only good to look at.
...the sound of metal scraping against concrete as walkways and sidewalks were shoveled
...rock salt, gray and gritty under my feet
...people working together after a particularly heavy snowstorm to make our narrow street passable
...snowbrushes and scrapers being a staple inside the car
...snowpants, how bulky they were
...being a girl, having to wear a uniform skirt, and walking to school in the snow when I didn't want to wear snow pants
...pull-on rubber boots, the kind you wore your shoes inside
...the snow getting inside your pull-on boots, caking up, and freezing your feet
...the new shoe boots I got for Christmas, the ones with the fur inside where I didn't wear shoes with them, but the snow got in just the same
...the shoe boot that split at the sole and the wet would seep in soaking my sock on the way to school
...the requisite shoe bag to carry my shoes while I wore the shoe boots, all the girls had them. You were nobody without one.
...walking to school and arriving frozen to the bone, but being expected to get right to work anyway, stiff fingers, frozen ears and nose and all
...building snowmen that never looked as grand and perfect as the ones on television or in books
...not having carrots to use for the snowman's nose or a top hat for his head like the books and TV said he should have
...Sitting and reading near the forced air vent at my grandmother's house
...wishing I had a horse and sled like Heidi's grandfather
...wishing I had a grandfather who was a regular in my life like Heidi's was and who didn't live all the way "down south" like mine
...how quiet and still everything outside seems to get when it snows
...playing until the mittens or gloves weren't doing any good and going in the house because it was too cold for even a kid to be outside
...the smell of stiff gloves and damp scarf cooking on the hot radiator
stinging ears and fingertips and running water over same
...sticking a towel or a scatter rug under the back door to keep the cold air from seeping in
...Daddy down in the basement with the furnace because it was acting up
...snow ice cream
...car exhaust- blackened ice and slush
...sliding on ice covered sidewalks
...slipping and falling on ice covered sidewalks and not worrying about breaking a hip in the process
...ice-skating on the pond at Belle Isle
...ice-skating in the kid next door's backyard after his father flooded it to make a rink for us
...chapped lips
...sledding in the street
...the boys playing ice hockey in the street and the day Kenny got whacked in the mouth with one of the sticks and lost a tooth
...the Thanksgiving Day parade on Woodward Avenue in downtown
...the Ice Capades
...the Auto show at Cobo Hall
...Christmases on Ironwood and Quincy; they weren't so good on Pasadena because we were older by then and we knew too much
...the sound of splashing as I rode in the back seat of Daddy's car to pick Mom up from work
...Being cold, cold, cold inside and out....

Life is about experiences, and I wouldn't trade mine for anything, but snow, ice, slush, cold- been there, done that. I'll take a Georgia winter any time.