What? It’s not a snow day???? December 1, 2006

That’s right. No snow day for the kids. But it was a snow day for me! By 7 a.m., I was perusing the various emergency closing websites and listening to WGN, to no avail. My kids had school. Heh. I mean, of course, for their sakes, I did kinda wish that school had been canceled, if only so I could say, “PANCAKES FOR EVERYBODY!!!!” and dig out the chocolate chips from their hiding place and make a grand batch of chocolate chip pancakes and some sausage (they won’t know it’s veggie sausage if I hide the box, I was thinking), and then dig out the snow pants and gloves and shit and go outside to start a fort. Because today’s snow? Was PERFECT PACKING SNOW. And if you are still young enough, either in years or in heart, to remember standing in your front yard in your snow pants and coat and boots, legs spread apart as you lean forward to gather a couple of handfuls of snow together to gauge the packi-ness, and discover that that snow had just the perfect blend of moisture and ice to mold together in a way that makes for perfect snow-fort molding (and perfect really-hard snowballs for that crabby brat down the street’s back, sending her whining and crying into her house), well, then, god bless your pretty little heart. Because before my husband left for work, he blew the snow off the walks, came in to grab the lunch I had lovingly (;)) made for him, and a mug of coffee, and said, “That is some heavy snow.” And I thought, Wouldn’t it be great if school gets canceled and the kids and I can pull on our cold-weather gear after a breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and (veggie) sausage and go outside and build an awesome snow fort? Then I thought, I’ll dig out the food coloring and a couple of spray bottles, and we’ll spray the fort some fun colors, and it’ll be awesome, and we’ll be all hot on the inside, and our fingers and toes will be frozen, but we won’t care because we’ll be having a freakin’ blast playing out in the snow together, and at some point, I’ll stop and wipe frozen sweat from my brow and lift my face to the sky and open my mouth and catch a million snowflakes on my tongue, and my kids will follow suit and then we’ll look at each other and laugh in that wonderful brand of glee that is only available to children and their parents when their parents stop worrying about bullshit long enough to go outside and build a fucking fort.

However, school was not canceled.

So, because I am a wonderful and dedicated parent, I made them go to school. I shouldn’t have. I should have said, You know what? Fuck it. Fuck school. It’s friday. Let’s make some pancakes and hot chocolate and go outside and have some fucking fun. Goddamnit.

But I didn’t, and I’ve regretted it all day. Really. After they left, I putzed around. I did some laundry. I cleaned the bathrooms. But every few minutes, I gazed outside at that perfect packing snow and I thought, Damn, I wish I had someone to play with.

Two days ago, it was 65 degrees. I thought, what if winter never comes? You’d think I’d just moved here, rather than living in this great state of Chicago for the last 37 years. And yes, I meant STATE.

The thing is, we love this shit, we Chicagoans. We love the first crappy forecast of the year, so we can stand around and debate whether or not the forecaster knows what the hell he’s talking about. We can say things like “It’s a slow news day. We’ll get flurries at best.” The fact is, we WANT the snow. We want a rehash of the blizzard of ‘78. We want to be completely immobilized by snow. We wish that snowblowers and even, for god’s sake, SHOVELS, had never been invented. Snow plows? What are they? We want 28 inches of snow to fall within a 20 hour period, and we want to have a story to tell about it taking 8 hours for us to make it home from the city. And when we finally made it home, someone special to us had made our home cozy, and handed us a drink, and we planned, with our children, to make an incredible fort the next day. However, because snowblowers are so readily available and relatively inexpensive, and because local governments pay guys ridiculous amounts of money to keep the streets clear, we no longer have any excuses to make it to work/school/whatever. And that’s really annoying. We want it to be so bad that the school buses don’t bother showing up. We want it to be so bad, we have to stay home and play like kids.

I remember a snow day when I was a kid, I think it was during that crazy ‘78 blizzard. My dad was out of town on a business trip, and in the years since, I’ve heard him tell a story of driving on a highway on his way through Indiana to Ohio, and getting off the road to get gas or coffee or whatever, and the snow blowing so thick and white, he got back on going the wrong way and drove for hours and ended up in Iowa. Or something like that. I remember literally shoveling a tunnel to the mailbox. I was ten-ish. It seemed like a tunnel. And there’s pictures of my brother and I hidden behind some bushes at the back of the house, and a HUGE drift had formed, and we used the air conditioner thing as a stove, and made meatloaves and bread out of snow, and held this all-day-long weird fantasy game of that being our snow-house. We made plates out of snow. We made everything we needed out of snow, and we played all damned day long, and when we came in, surely there was hot chocolate and cookies.

Is this post long enough? It’s snowy out. My kids are still young and beautiful and naive enough, and Chicago-bred enough, to think that when it snows, it’s Christmas.

So, happy season everybody. Whether or not you get snow where you are, take a minute to stand outside and look up at the sky and just be damned glad it’s still there. And if you do get snow? Toss on your snow pants and go outside and open your damned mouth and refuse to worry that the snowflakes might be slightly radioactive or poisonous. Build a fort. Throw snowballs at random cars and that cute girl down the street. It’s WINTER!!!!