Winter decided to stop by today. About time, if you ask me. Almost sixty in the dead of winter, while seemingly a nice respite from the cold, is at the same time a little disconcerting. Besides, it’s not like we’ve been laboring under a lot of frigid weather so far. We really don’t have mind-numbing temperatures to “escape” from. With the exception of a brief cold snap that lasted no more than a few days, this winter has been anything but winter-esque. It’s disappointing, when it comes down to it. I like my seasons…seasonal.
Today? Today it’s snowing. Big, fat flakes that stick to a man’s beard. That great kind of snow that turns the grass and trees a beautiful white, yet leaves the roads and sidewalks bare and wet. In short, it’s an adult snow. This is no snow for children. Children don’t give a tin shit about the roads and sidewalks. They don’t spare a thought for the adults forced to wield shovels while sucking wind and nursing bad backs. Children pine for the thick, wet snow that’s most easily molded into snowballs and forts and snowmen. They not only pine for it, they pine for a lot of it. Heaps of it. School-closing piles of it. You can mark the passing of your childhood by the exact date that you see a forecast of a foot of wet, road-closing snow and you groan instead of doing a happy dance around the living room.
Don’t get me wrong here. I’m an adult, and I like a good snowfall. Love one, actually. But all of us old folks know that when the inches of forecast snow start creeping into double digits, we start wincing at the thought of aching muscles, screaming backs and nightmarish commutes. You know that old saying about too much of a good thing? It applies here.
I went for a walk in the snow at lunchtime. I listened to Sigur Ros (which would be mandatory listening on snowy days, were I king), took in the snow covered landscape and breathed in that lovely and unmistakable smell of a snowy day. (Lorelai Gilmore could always smell snow coming. As she once said, “It's coming. I always know. I can smell it, and I'm never wrong.”) I didn’t think about the commute home or cleaning snow off of a car or any of the hundreds of winter weather inconveniences. I just walked and took it all in. I looked at the snow like a kid does, if only for a brief time. Oddly, that childlike feeling has carried over into the afternoon. I’ve been looking out the window, watching the birds flit around the snow covered trees, and I’ve been feeling the greatest sense of peace.
Maybe we need to take a step back once in a while and think like kids. Forget all the adult bullshit we muck up our lives with and reduce things to their basics. Look past all the noise and static and concentrate on the simple beauty in everything. Maybe the kids have it right. Maybe. Don’t tell them I said that, though. Those smug little bastards, with their young, strong backs.
