It's Snowing!

Snow Stories

“And finally, Winter, with its bitin', whinin' wind, and all the land will be mantled with snow.”

                                                  Roy Bean

Thirty-four degrees and snowing in Birmingham this morning. To me, snow is like a beautiful woman with a cold and calculating heart—you don't want to tangle with her. I really liked a Mae West quote I found that said, “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” I just couldn't figure out how to use that in a spirituality blog. Speaking of Snow White, I've been posting Disney collection items to Ian's ebay store. Who knew that people pay perfectly good money for figurines of Steamboat Mickey and Pooh, Snow White and Goofy. Ebay is a good place to go if you get depressed about the economy and our idiot government's inability to do one intelligent thing. People are still buying and selling like gangbusters there.

But I digress. Watching snow fall—watching, that is, from a warm house with a steaming cup of coffee—is a zen experience. It's like watching the ocean waves or wind in the leaves; it's calming and hypnotic. Snow always takes me back to when my children were young, and even further back to when I was young. My friends and I would go to Betty Lou's house because she lived across the street from a good sledding hill. I didn't have a sled, but other people did. We would sled for hours, with someone always ending up in the iced over creek. Then we would trek home, frozen to the bone, and leave our snow-caked clothes and boots on the front porch. Mother would make hot chocolate to warm us up and fuss about our staying out so long in the cold. Kids are stupid like that. They don't feel the cold until it has completely taken over their bodies.

Snow has a romantic overtone to it. I suppose it is because life in the fast lane stops—people are forced to take a day off. We associate it with fun, with socializing, with getting cozy in front of a big fire. One of my fondest snow memories was when my dad would wrap chestnuts in aluminum foil and roast them in the fireplace. It was something from his own childhood when chestnut trees covered the Appalachian mountains. I wish I had asked him how to do that, because now it's a lost art. By 1940, a blight had killed every single tree in the North Carolina mountains, and chestnuts had to be imported from Japan. They were a delicacy in our household—like hard candy and oranges, we had them only at Christmas.

If it's snowing where you are today, take time out and tell someone you love stories from your snow days as a child. Here in the south, snow is enough of an oddity that we actually remember those days better than most. Sharing stories is something you will be glad you did later. And so will your children and grandchildren. If there's no one to tell, write them down in a journal, or better yet, tell them to me. Our stories live on long after we are gone.

                                            In the spirit,

                                                Jane