So now, I either need to go cry for an hour, or write a blog post. I think I'll write a blog post... But speaking of freezing cold icebergs (see how I did that? I'm really good at this segue thing...) George's comment under my last post got me thinking about my love of snow. It seems that most people don't feel the same way I do about the fluffy frozen flakes -- except, perhaps, avid skiers and snowboarders and whoever keeps those "ice hotels" up and running in cold climates.
But then I realized that the majority of my exposure to snow was in my pre-18-year-old days. Until I was 9 years old, I lived in one of the snow capitals of the U.S. -- Buffalo, New York. Snow was a given when winter rolled around -- it was just part of the season. A foot of snow would fall, the wind would blow it into kid-sized drifts, and the call of the outdoors was undeniable. Eric and I would bundle up in stiff, padded snowsuits that blocked out the gustiest of winds, and dive headfirst into the powder. We built snowmen, dug tunnels, and hollowed out snow caves... I used to imagine that I was an explorer, lost in the wilderness, and my only shelter was my homemade frozen room... I actually thought that it might be possible to curl up within all that snow and take a nap (so perhaps those ice hotels aren't such a bad idea?). Snow was just FUN -- when you're seven or eight years old, you don't get stuck with shoveling duties or driving a car...
And then we moved to Texas for a few years, and snow was on hold for a little while. I found the novelty of 80-degree weather in February interesting at first... but after a couple years, I found myself wishing for a white Christmas (something I'm not sure Austin has ever had...). And then, when I was 13, we moved to New Jersey and welcomed the return of snow. (Okay, SOME of us welcomed the return of snow.) New Jersey is quite different from Buffalo, which is very flat and crisscrossed with straight, right-angled streets. Consequently, it takes a LOT of snow to shut down Buffalo. Jersey, on the other hand, is filled with hilly, winding, serpentine roads -- a few inches of snow, and you've got yourself a day off from school. When snow was in the forecast, I'd wake up in the morning and just listen -- before I even got out of bed to look through my window -- because I could tell by the way the cars moved down our street whether we'd be likely to have a snow day. We lived right on a hairpin curve in the road (the site of many an accident when we lived in that house), and if I could hear cars zipping around the curve like normal, I'd know that my school day was about to begin. But, if I heard the wonderful sound of crunching tires, slowly, gingerly, painstakingly inching down the road, I would excitedly hop out of bed to view the wintery school-closing scene outside. Ahhhh... those days were awesome...
It wasn't too long after high school that I moved back down to Texas and lived there for years and years. So you see, all my memories of snow have been GOOD memories (save for one snowy drive down Interstate 81 in Virginia that ended with our car stuck in a snowbank -- but that's another story for another time...). And because I've always associated snow with snow forts and snowmen and hot chocolate and Christmas and days off from school, I absolutely LOVE the stuff. Even if I don't get days off from school anymore.
But I AM determined to build a snow fort in downtown Chicago after our next big storm. (Eric, you're helping -- bring a shovel. :))
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