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The Family Room by Michelle Martin

December 7, 2008

First snow

When does snow go from a joyous occasion to an onerous burden?

When do people stop looking forward to the first snow of the year, and start dreading it instead?

When I woke up on a Monday morning and found the world turned white, I did think it was pretty.

But I also thought how much longer it would take to get to a doctor appointment and to work, time that I could ill afford to spare from everything else that had to get done that day.

My kids, on the other hand, looked at the snow with pure, open-mouthed, unadulterated joy.

Their reaction wasn’t, “How do we deal with this?”

It was, “Can we go out and play?” Before breakfast?

I remember that magic. I remember seeing the snowflakes drifting down on my backyard when I was young, and planning all the things we could do: build snowmen, sled, have snowball fights. When we got cold, we could come in and have hot chocolate. The need for shoveling — or for cleaning dripped-on floors over and over again — just didn’t register.

When my brother and I got a little older, we did have to shovel, for free at home. But it also meant the opportunity to earn an extra few dollars from the neighbors, even the ones we weren’t actually allowed to charge. One elderly spinster would inevitably see us (it couldn’t have been all the noise we made …) and give us a couple of dollars apiece, without our ever asking for it.

Even in high school, snow carried the possibility of a day off school, if there was enough of it.

But sometime in adulthood, the glittery white stuff lost its magic. As I got older, I could see the way the snow itself would age, turning from a pristine white blanket to dirty wet slush, slopping into my shoes and onto my kitchen floor.

Good thing I had kids.

Even when they were babies, I was like a kid again in the snow with them, taking them outside to feel the cold flakes on their noses and eyelashes, pulling them on sleds when they were toddlers and helping them pack snowballs to roll into snowpeople. Each year, we waited for the first real snow — snow that was deep enough and packable enough to make something out of it.

Now that Caroline and Frank have gotten older, they don’t need my hands so much to help them play with the snow. Now 10 and 8, their hands help shovel, and they take turns pulling each other on the sled. But I still need their eyes to see the snow as a gift — and not a gag gift.

Martin is assistant editor of the Catholic New World. Contact her at [email protected].