Adults need to remember when snow was wonderful

The Boston Herald

When my kids were little, I used to notice these things: The way the sky in winter looks as if you could skate on it; the way the evergreens, laden with snow, look like they belong next to a gingerbread house; the way the world looks when the snow stops and the sun comes out and everything seems fresh and newborn.

We used to go for walks on snow days, down the street to my friend Anne's. It was a short walk, less than half a mile, but it always took an hour to get there because we had to pause at spaces where not even a bird had landed, where the snow arched and fell in smooth, undulating waves, pristine, untouched until we jumped in it and chased each other through it, then fell on our backs and made angels in it.

When we arrived, Anne would have cocoa for the kids and spiced tea for me and cookies set out on a china plate. We'd take off our wet coats and mittens and hang them on the radiator then hurry into the playroom next to the kitchen, where a wood stove always burned. We'd sit by the fire, the kids, Anne's big black Lab, Tar, Anne and I. We'd sip our tea and try to talk, try to have an adult conversation, but we never succeeded. It was always, "Mom, let me tell you this." Or "Anne and Mom, want to play Monopoly?" or "I think Tar has to go out."

Julie, who was a baby still, would sit in a corner and play with the games that filled a whole closet in this room. Anne didn't mind if all the pieces got mixed and all the cards got jumbled or if the boy with the red hair in "Go to the Head of the Class" ended up on Park Place. We could put the game pieces back later. These were tranquil days; we just didn't know it then. We thought they were chaotic.

Our sons would go outside to play and we'd zip up their jackets and make sure that they wore their hats. The girls would go upstairs to Amy's room to transform themselves into fairy princesses, and Julie would eventually tag along, and we'd begin to talk then about a book we were reading or a movie we just saw or a thought we had. But soon someone would get snow in his boots and would come racing into the house to change. Or someone wouldn't be able to find her fairy princess crown. Or someone would have to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW.

I used to regret all the conversations Anne and I never finished. If only we could complete just one. Now I wonder, what could have been more important than what was going on in front of us? What book, what movie, what piece of gossip, what observation, what epiphany, could have compared to all that was happening before our eyes?

"Let's go outside and play," the children would beg. "Let's go sledding. Let's race to the barn. Come on, Mom. Come on, Anne. Stop talking. Play with us!" Play with us. How I miss those days.

My daughter Lauren misses them, too. "The thing about being an adult," she announced Thursday morning after shoveling her car out of a snowbank so she could get to work, "is that you begin to see everything as a problem. Take the snow. Once you start driving and working, you forget how much you used to love it. You forget how beautiful it is.”

I remember the teacher telling us in second grade that no two snowflakes are alike. I was awed by this. All the snow that has ever fallen all over the world all through the centuries and no two snowflakes are exactly alike. That's what you have to remember when you look at the snow when you grow up. That's what you have to keep reminding yourself. That way you'll love it again.

We tend to create problems out of what's in front of us, no matter what it is. When it's cold we want heat. When the kids are young we want them grown. But then when they're grown, we want them small again and when summer comes, we crave a cool day. I ask my 9-year-old friend what she thinks of all the snow. "I love it," she replies. Do you like summer? "I love summer?" "Which do you like best?" I say, thinking that I have her cornered. But she doesn't even pause.

“I like whatever it is,” she says.