People who know me, also know that I’m fan of neither cold nor snow. I grew up in the warm climes of the English speaking Caribbean (the West Indies) and had my first experience with snow when I was almost nineteen. I it was my first semester at college and I had made a few new aquaintances. One of them came banging on my door yelling “Snow”! I stepped outside with him to experience this wonder of white stuff falling from the sky. I remember enjoying the cold wet fluff in my hands and was told to try and catch a snow flake with my tongue. It seemed wonderful and magical. It was only later that I came to understand the true meaning of a snow fall.
It meant truding out in the cold and wet to a class. It meant that my shoes were full of sand and salt. It meant that I had to spend months uner a blanket. Yeah, I’m not too positve about snow. Today’s snow fall means my back will get a real work out. It means the roads will be full of incompent idiots in SUV who think they are invincible (thank goodness Montgomery Martial Arts is closed today). My wife, Bhavna, wonders how I managed to survive the winters in Michigan while attending the University of Michigan. I did it because I wanted an advanced degree. She’s right; I survived it.
But now … I’ve got kids. The first words I heard from my eleven year old daugher this morning were, “It snowing! It snowing!”. My almost thirteen year old son says he won’t let us move to California or Florida — I keep threatening to do it — because it doesn’t snow. Perhaps I need to see this through their eyes. Perhaps, it’s time to put away adult thinking and just enjoy what is. “It snowed!”