Snow is Weird: Reflections on a snow day

Snow is weird. 

Individually, each snowflake is weak; even a small handful will capitulate in watery defeat after a minute in a closed fist. Anyone, even my almost three-year-old daughter, can go outside and get a power trip by destroying (or in her case, eating) a small amount of snow. But then these little snowflakes keep coming...and coming and coming. I keep looking outside as this "Groundhog Day blizzard" settles in and every time I look out I find myself thinking "Wow, that's so beautiful" or something like that. In an hour or two, however, when I go out to shovel off the deck and blow out the walkways, I'm going to be mentally and audibly cursing the abundance of snow. 

Every time a big snowstorm hits somewhere, you hear about somebody dying while shoveling snow; snow murders. That's right! The beautiful, awe-inspiring white stuff kills people. Not cool. If snow could talk, it would probably just laugh an evil, murderous, mocking laugh at us and our silly assumption that we are in control of things. Snow leads people to buy hundreds of dollars in equipment and spend hours cleaning it up. Snow forces municipalities to spend millions of dollars every year just to push it around. Oh, you think we're going to have school today? Snow says: "Nope...try again tomorrow and in the meantime, how about you exert a tremendous amount of energy taking me from over here and putting me in a pile over there. Sound good? Great! Oh, and in a few days, there's going to be more of me." 

Snow is a jerk.

However, later today, I'm going to don my snow pants and mittens and I'm going to go sledding with my daughter. I'm not going to be cursing at the snow then. On the contrary, I will be laughing wildly and most likely exclaiming how much fun I am having. By then, I will have completely forgotten how disdainful I was of the snow only a few hours before. I will also have set aside my frustration of having to make up a snow day later in the school year. In those moments of sledding joy, I will surely reflect upon how great it is that we have so much snow.

Snow is wonderful but...

Snow is also a master psychological manipulator.

And then, in a couple weeks, it will all be gone. Then, we will slowly forget all the pain and inconvenience that snow caused us over the previous cold, dark, quarter of a year and after a few months of soaking up the summer sun, premonitions of a winter wonderland, hot chocolate, snow forts, and sledding will creep into our minds and bring smiles to our lips.

What the heck.