Snow Day
I’m thinking about my dream rather than living it. Watching, not participating. I must be awake. I try to force myself back into the adventure but it slips away to join the other long-forgotten dreams. A pang of regret fails to materialize as last night’s final waking thought sits me up in bed. I’m now too excited to mourn a dream. It was supposed to snow. How much was unknown, but I fell asleep with hope.
Fully awake, I kick off my blankets and ignore the icy blast that greets me as I hop from the bed and pull back the curtains. Snow! Literally tons of it! The cinders in the road are barely visible, like Oreo dust in a glass of milk. It is a sure sign that the falling snow has outpaced the plows’ clearing capabilities.
I wake up my brother and our tromping down the stairs awakens the rest of the family. We flip on the TV and plant ourselves five feet away, staring at the local morning news. We are not concerned with whatever the talking heads are droning on about. The only news worth following is scrolling along at the bottom of the screen.
We curse the fact that our school is at the far end of the alphabet. We wait. Many other local schools are closed, which increases our optimism, but the occasional “two-hour delay” checks our giddiness and holds us in doubt. Then it happens. It’s better than Christmas. Two words sliding across the screen lead to jubilation:
Susquehanna: Closed.
No sooner were Lucky Charms poured into the bowl than the phone starts ringing. Everyone wants to know if we are going to Grandma’s house. Of course we are. Whether I was 7 or 17, Grandma was always there to oversee the greatest of winter traditions: the snow day.
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Grandma lived on Thorn Hill Road. Thorn Hill was a dirt road off of another dirt road just east of nowhere in particular. It was a mile-long meandering path with half a dozen houses on a wooded hill originally home to the Thorn family, who now reside in a cemetery plot on the top. Such roads, with few year-round residents, do not demand particularly rigorous winter maintenance. Snow plows didn’t bother with Thorn Hill until well into the afternoon. This made Grandma’s house an ideal snow day HQ.
On snow days the roads were deemed too treacherous for the school buses to ferry children to school, but my friends’ mothers accepted the driving risk over the alternative of having the kids indoors all day. They would brave the inclement weather and drop everyone off at Grandma’s house. On particularly bad days, when cars and trucks could not possibly get up the hill, we were dropped off at the base and walked up.
A group of anywhere from four to ten kids bundled up like Ralphy’s brother was met on those cold days with a warm smile by Grandma. She would give us a quick hello and then lead us to the barn where we would grab the appropriate sled – plastic for fluffy snow, metal runner for granular. Grandma had them all.
Grandma would trudge through the snow with us to the launching point and watch the first couple of runs. One by one we would take off, the crunch of the snow under the runners and unbridled laughter muffled as each sled rounded the first curve of the fresh snow-covered forest road. Grandma was a silent observer, and before long she would disappear back into the house.
I can remember only two or three runs of what must have been many hundreds down the hill over a decade. Naturally, these were the ones that didn’t end so well. The hill got fast when the snow was packed down, and the trees lining the road weren’t exactly saplings. What I and many of the core sledding group recall more fondly was the post-sledding activity.
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With fingers, nose, and toes freezing, and the rest of the body sweating under the layers and the effort of walking up the hill, we would make our way back to Grandma’s house. The stomping of our boots outside the lower-level door announced our presence. We would file into the mudroom and peel off our wet outer layers as the fire from the wood-burning stove warmed us faster than any heating system used today ever could. We then marched red-cheeked up the stairs to have Grandma and the smell of hot chocolate greet us at the top.
Grandma was a natural entertainer. Her whole house, built by Grandpa, was designed for this purpose. The living room, kitchen, and dining room were all one high-ceilinged open space; a call back to the great halls of times past. It could seat 30 comfortably and yet still felt intimate with just two. No matter the size of the sledding party, we were all treated to bottomless cups of hot chocolate and well stocked cookie jars. We would sit around and talk while being warmed inside and out.
The conversations would start off with fresh memories of sledding and inevitably turn to school, life, and love. Grandma rarely interjected into the conversation, but she was always present around us, a gracious hostess. This would lead to quite open discussions. During the winter months, Grandma probably had more insight into our core group of friends than teachers and mothers combined.
Eventually the snow plows would make it to Thorn Hill and ruin any chance for a second outing. But we were rarely ever up for leaving the comfortable surroundings created by our hostess, especially not for wet hats and gloves. The snow plows’ arrival would also signal the beginning of the end of the snow day as the moms were soon to follow the trucks up the hill.
Despite the fun coming to an end, we were never really sad to leave. The harsh winter environment in which we lived was sure to grant us another day off in the near future. We would soon be right back in the great hall forming memories. Memories of hot cocoa steam warming my face as I leaned over the mug, of laughter, of care-free adolescence. All complements of Grandma. Looking back, the fact that our fondest memories are of post-sledding activities makes it fortuitous that we always said we were “going to Grandma’s house” and not “going sledding at Grandma’s.”
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I don’t recall ever having asked Grandma it if was acceptable for everyone to come over or whether she felt like entertaining. Maybe our parents did, but I like to think that they didn’t. I like to think that Grandma was watching the same news broadcasts those snowy mornings and when she saw the magical words scroll across the bottom of the screen, she too was excited for the snow day.
