Sometimes we forget the small pleasures of life and when we revisit them we realize how much we have ignored them and how foolish we were in our neglect.
This Thursday evening brought snow to Asheville. After I had finished my work, I changed into my sweats, wrapped my scarf around my throat, pulled a stocking cap over my head, put on a pair of gloves I received for Christmas, and took a twelve-minute walk to Harris-Teeter.
This Thursday evening brought snow to Asheville. After I had finished my work, I changed into my sweats, wrapped my scarf around my throat, pulled a stocking cap over my head, put on a pair of gloves I received for Christmas, and took a twelve-minute walk to Harris-Teeter.
It felt pleasant to be out in the dark and the cold with the snow skirling in the headlights of passing cars. There were only a few of these motorists, and I crossed Broadway without even stopping. The young ballerinas at Dancer’s Pointe were just finishing up for the evening, and the vans driven by their parents were swinging out of the parking lot and into the quiet street.
Inside Harris-Teeter, I found the boxed wine, the diet tonic water, the frozen vegetables, and the bag of sugar on my grocery list. I dislike walking without a destination and so had concocted the list as a reason for leaving the house.
When I came out of the store, carrying my supplies in two large shopping totes I’d brought from home, the wind had picked up and the snow was falling wet and heavy across the street. As I walked home, the snow pricked my face and eyelashes, and by the time I arrived at my building my scarf and clothing were covered in snow. I brushed the snow from my clothing and climbed the stairs to my apartment.
After completing this short hike, I tried to remember when I had last walked in a falling snow for pleasure. It struck me that years had gone by, and though I had gone into the snow to shovel the front walkway or to get to my car, I had let too much time slip past without a simple walk in the snow.
This revelation set me to thinking. I remembered how much pleasure snow had given me as a boy—sledding, building snow forts, pitching snowballs at friends, eating snow. (Back then, we were warned not to eat the first snowfall for fear that it might contain nuclear waste from various atomic bomb tests, but I think we ate it anyway just as we used to gambol and dance while vacationing at the coast in the clouds of DDT brought by tank trucks to kill mosquitos.) I remembered my two years at Staunton Military Academy when I was not yet a teenager and how my fellow cadets and I used to have snowball fights involving thirty and forty boys and how one upperclassman chased me down and threw me to the ground and rubbed my face in the snow.
I remembered being in New York City in late January 1978. We were on our way to Europe for as long as our money would permit, but a snowstorm closed the airport and we were transported to a hotel. I remember lying that night in a bed in the hotel watching the snow falling and holding my new bride tightly in my arms as she slept. I remembered how we went to the lobby the next morning and looked outside and saw several cross-country skiers on the avenue.
I remembered my time with my children in the snow and how they would come in from sledding to the small back porch of our house and shake off their wet clothes. I remembered the Great Blizzard of ’93 when the snow was up to my four-year-old son’s shoulders and we had trouble pushing the doors on the side of the house open and how the snow kept falling and falling as if God Almighty Himself couldn’t stop it. And I remembered how years later when I was living in Asheville the snow made the drive home from my son’s basketball practice treacherous, with cars wrecked or stalled off the highway, and how when we arrived safely home, my son gave me one of his greatest compliments by telling me how well I had driven.
For many Americans, snow is routine, a part of daily life in the winter, an expected inconvenience. It means shoveling walks, digging out cars left adrift by plows, salting the icy spots on the driveway. For those living in the Mid-West or the Northeast, or for those trying to get out of an airport, snow at times seems a burden, an implacable enemy, a smasher of plans.
But here in the South snow more often brings a sense of excitement and celebration. For those of us who grew in Dixie, snow meant school cancellations. Once, long ago in Boonville, my hometown, snow feel on three successive March Wednesdays, keeping us out of school until the weekend and leaving us free to ride our sleds or to eat “snow cream.” Even as adults, we Southerners relish the cancellations of our children’s activities, or the meetings we were scheduled to attend, or the obligations we were to fulfill.
Soon I turn sixty-five years old. God willing, I now plan more marches in the snow. I intend to ride a sled. I will make snow cream. I will exchange snowball volleys with my grandchildren.
There are three weeks left of this winter of2016. Still time to send in some snow!
Inside Harris-Teeter, I found the boxed wine, the diet tonic water, the frozen vegetables, and the bag of sugar on my grocery list. I dislike walking without a destination and so had concocted the list as a reason for leaving the house.
When I came out of the store, carrying my supplies in two large shopping totes I’d brought from home, the wind had picked up and the snow was falling wet and heavy across the street. As I walked home, the snow pricked my face and eyelashes, and by the time I arrived at my building my scarf and clothing were covered in snow. I brushed the snow from my clothing and climbed the stairs to my apartment.
After completing this short hike, I tried to remember when I had last walked in a falling snow for pleasure. It struck me that years had gone by, and though I had gone into the snow to shovel the front walkway or to get to my car, I had let too much time slip past without a simple walk in the snow.
This revelation set me to thinking. I remembered how much pleasure snow had given me as a boy—sledding, building snow forts, pitching snowballs at friends, eating snow. (Back then, we were warned not to eat the first snowfall for fear that it might contain nuclear waste from various atomic bomb tests, but I think we ate it anyway just as we used to gambol and dance while vacationing at the coast in the clouds of DDT brought by tank trucks to kill mosquitos.) I remembered my two years at Staunton Military Academy when I was not yet a teenager and how my fellow cadets and I used to have snowball fights involving thirty and forty boys and how one upperclassman chased me down and threw me to the ground and rubbed my face in the snow.
I remembered being in New York City in late January 1978. We were on our way to Europe for as long as our money would permit, but a snowstorm closed the airport and we were transported to a hotel. I remember lying that night in a bed in the hotel watching the snow falling and holding my new bride tightly in my arms as she slept. I remembered how we went to the lobby the next morning and looked outside and saw several cross-country skiers on the avenue.
I remembered my time with my children in the snow and how they would come in from sledding to the small back porch of our house and shake off their wet clothes. I remembered the Great Blizzard of ’93 when the snow was up to my four-year-old son’s shoulders and we had trouble pushing the doors on the side of the house open and how the snow kept falling and falling as if God Almighty Himself couldn’t stop it. And I remembered how years later when I was living in Asheville the snow made the drive home from my son’s basketball practice treacherous, with cars wrecked or stalled off the highway, and how when we arrived safely home, my son gave me one of his greatest compliments by telling me how well I had driven.
For many Americans, snow is routine, a part of daily life in the winter, an expected inconvenience. It means shoveling walks, digging out cars left adrift by plows, salting the icy spots on the driveway. For those living in the Mid-West or the Northeast, or for those trying to get out of an airport, snow at times seems a burden, an implacable enemy, a smasher of plans.
But here in the South snow more often brings a sense of excitement and celebration. For those of us who grew in Dixie, snow meant school cancellations. Once, long ago in Boonville, my hometown, snow feel on three successive March Wednesdays, keeping us out of school until the weekend and leaving us free to ride our sleds or to eat “snow cream.” Even as adults, we Southerners relish the cancellations of our children’s activities, or the meetings we were scheduled to attend, or the obligations we were to fulfill.
Soon I turn sixty-five years old. God willing, I now plan more marches in the snow. I intend to ride a sled. I will make snow cream. I will exchange snowball volleys with my grandchildren.
There are three weeks left of this winter of2016. Still time to send in some snow!