One of my favorite things about working at a newspaper is that occasionally I am struck by inspiration and get to pour my thoughts and opinions into a words that get printed. Well, this past weekend provided such inspiration.
Snow. Tiny bits of frozen ice crystals falling from the sky building to cover the ground and landscape, seemingly making everything stand still. Growing up in Oklahoma, I had plenty of the white stuff. We usually saw our first snowfall of the year before my birthday in November and would continue to see it through the following February. I never grew tired of it, however.
Snow always seemed magical to me, but looking back on things I think my fondness of snow came more from the memories surround it, and what it meant to me and my family.
One of my favorite memories involving snow was also a christmas based memory. At the time, it was just my mother and me that lived at our family abode. We lived a simple country life surrounded by farming neighbors that specialized in raising world class cutting horses. Jumping in the car for a quick trip to town for shopping wasn't really a practical idea. So Christmases were more of a homemade variety.
The tree (which I'll get back to in a bit) was adorned with garland made from popcorn and string which was produced while my mother and I would sit in the living room watching classic tales such as “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer”. Ornaments were either family heirlooms passed down to mother from her grandmother or homemade crafts manufactured by me utilizing tinfoil, popsicle sticks and yarn. We didn't have the shiny new ornaments or store bought bulbs. Things were simple and done with love. And in my child like mind, our humbly adorned tree was the most beautiful tree in the world.
Now getting back to the tree itself. My mother and I did not have an artificial Christmas tree and the idea of buying a live tree from the store when we had acres of wooded land behind our house, just seemed absurd. Therefore, that left one option; we would cut the tree ourselves.
Somehow, every year when we would wake up in the morning with the notion of cutting our tree on that day, I would run to the window, look outside, and the magic of snow would strike again. Snow would be covering every inch of my personal little wonderland. My mother would bundle me from head to toe in winter clothing and off we would go on our adventure to collect our tree.
Now, here I need to point out some differences in the snow in Oklahoma as to snow we get down here in our southern states. First of all, how to say this? Its dryer there. Down here snow seems to melt so quickly with our humidity and warmer climate, that the snow is a wetter “colder” variety. In Oklahoma, the snow is fluffy, thick and deep.
A second big difference in the snow between Oklahoma and the south, is fairly obvious but worth repeating. There is simply much, much more of it than we get down here. In fact, they wouldn't cancel schools unless the snow was at least three feet deep.
Now getting back to the story. As my mother and I would set out for our adventure in the woods, I would notice something that has stuck with me all of my life. In my opinion it is one of the most joyous of memories. The satisfying crunch that occurs when a booted foot walks, runs, jumps or stomps in the snow. I would quite deliberately crunch my way through following my mother to our intended target located in the solum snow blanketed woods.
When we located the perfect specimen, after slowly checking several potential trees, my mother would set to work. I laughed as I stood in the cold staring up into the branches of the older oaks watching the flurries rise into the air and dance with each whack of my mother's axe on our little evergreen. Time again seemed to stand still for a moment as I was mesmerized by the floating flakes.
After the tree had fallen to the earth, the struggle to drag our prize back to the house would begin. What absolute glorious fun it was for me as a child to slip and fall and slide through the snow in a well intentioned but probably useless attempt to help my mother make the haul back to our house.
By the time that we would make it back, we would both be exhausted, cold, sore and in dire need of hot cocoa to warm our souls and frozen fingers. The laughter that we would share through the whole process still continues to be one of my mother's and my own favorite memories.
So with the snow this weekend, I was reminded of my childhood joy, when my own children burst into my bedroom early Saturday morning with expressions of wondrous joy and exuberant impatience that I was not dressed and ready to run outside in the newly fallen snow. Perhaps catching some of their contagious excitement I was ready and out the door five minutes after waking up.
As soon as my booted foot hit the ground, there it was. Crunch! Instantly, I was thrown back to my childhood self surrounded by memories full of incomparable joy. Every detail of the snow filled days of my youth swarmed and elated my soul. My personal moment of being lost in memories didn't last long as I soon felt the icy smack of a snowball thrown at the back of my head by one of my children whom are currently still siding together on not “ratting-out” who threw the first ball.
From that moment on we were caught up in a morning of family adventure making memories for us to tuck away in our hearts. And even though we played for hours, for that morning time stood still.
So although, snow can be messy when it starts to melt and presents it's own set of problems, when it does arrive for us, down here in the south, don't miss the opportunity to join in on the magical moments of a snow filled day and tuck those bits of wondrous joy into your own heart.
