Downy flake descends over Wall Township, and the high school cancels classes tomorrow. A snow day.
Snow. Such a beautiful substance. People nostalgize over it. “I remember the snow days of my youth . . . sledding down the big hill right around the corner, then coming home and having hot chocolate. And there was no school!”
People complain over it: “Be careful driving, the roads are icy today from the snow, and they haven’t even cleared some of the roads yet. I shoveled the driveway all morning, my back’s killing me. Can’t the government do the same for the roads?”
It’s entrancing to look upon, especially as it falls. It feels different from rainfall, because it makes no noise. With rain, the patter the fills up the background of everywhere is calming. It reminds you constantly of the rain’s presence. You can tune out and tap into the outside downpour, or if you’re outside, you can close your eyes and feel as if the earth is peeing on you. But with snow, it is much different. When you sit inside your house in your pj’s, you know it is snowing because you have to turn the thermostat up again. Snow is visual. Sometimes rain, when its thin enough, scattered enough, and fast enough, can disappear to the eye when viewed from behind a window. But the same never happens to snow: a quick glance out the window and you’re instantly aware of it’s total dominance of the landscape. It erases the blemishes of grass and vegetation. Snow is the communist’s weather: It equalizes, erases distinctions, boundaries. The high-class roads and lowly grasses are made one beneath a blanket of snow.
Only two weeks ago, I spent an hour bailing my car out of two-foot deep snow, which had surrounded it on all sides. After much struggling, a friendly professional with a snow-blower put his hands on the hood of my car and pushed it, while I sat inside, with the gear in neutral, and steered it free. I escaped the snow. But sometimes it gets you: Nikelia fell on her ass twice when we walked back to my home earlier that same day, because the ice on the walk ways of campus was well-hidden by the white blanket of snow.
It rarely snows on Christmas in Wall, only once in my memory, and of that memory, I only remember that it snowed on that Christmas, not what gifts I received or whether I liked them.
I suppose I’ll go sledding tomorrow, down the big hill right around the corner, then come home and have hot chocolate. And there’ll be no school for us collegians, reciting the script of a youthful snow-day as if we never grew up, rejoicing that school is cancelled, school is cancelled! – even if we were never going to be there in the first place.