It snowed a few days ago. I sat and watched it in my warm, cozy, comfortable house, drinking coffee in front of a warm fire. It was beautiful, peaceful. I live in the woods — amongst the huge pines I love. Gazing out on the snow covered trees, I could convince myself I was just about anywhere. But I don’t need to. I’m happy here. I have come to love the snow. However, it hasn’t always been that way. The memorable snows in my life are memorable for so many different reasons.

Until the 1980s

As a child in West Texas, we never expected snow. In fact, I wasn’t sure if winter with snow was a real thing. It seemed like a fairy tale to me. But I do remember one time when it snowed, and my sister and I couldn’t wait to play in it.

It was only a couple of inches, but we tried to build a snowman. We gathered and rolled up all the snow from across the yard picking up sticks and grass and everything on the ground below to get every piece of snow we could for our snowman, which turned out to be rather small given what we had to work with. We would get cold and go inside, and each time I was convinced that we were in for the night. It was time to get cozy and warm, so I would run a warm bath and get nice and cozy in my pajamas until my sister inspired me to go outside again. Eventually my mom got quite irritated with the number of baths I was racking up that day, and so the fun ended. Rather abruptly, as was her style.

Snow was more than a one-time wonder in my childhood, however. We used to drive from West Texas up through the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and to a small Kansas town where my mother’s parents lived. The car trip felt interminable as a child, but we went for Thanksgiving and Christmas several years. Some of those years involved snow, more snow than I’d ever seen. More than enough snow to make a snowman. My sister and I would go out and play, and my grandmother would fit us with plastic bread sacks over our shoes held up with rubber bands close to our knees to keep our feet dry. She was a Depression-era woman, and let’s just say she was very resourceful.

Fast forward through time and space… (1993-1994)

I’m a woman. I’m a child. I’m an 18-year old married woman-child. My man-child husband and I travel north, to Missouri, where he is stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base. Missouri was so beautiful during the fall, but then the winter came. The possibility seems increasingly likely that I have unknowingly died and gone straight to hell — a frozen, never ending, subzero hell. I have never been so cold in my life. The only thing more inhospitable than the Missouri winter is my ill-fated marriage.

In the present moment

I can appreciate how the snow makes everything beautiful. It glistens in the air like glitter. It covers the frozen sleeping trees and earth under a mystical blanket. It is cleansing — cathartic. The cold air freezes impurities in the air, as well as the overpopulated insects. It gives me a chance to make a fire in my fireplace and bask in the heat of the glow as my mind and body slip into some level of hibernation.

Kansas City, Missouri (1996)

In the years I lived in Missouri, I never got accustomed to the snow. Of course, there was more to it than just snow. Midwest winters are rough. There is at least as much ice as there is snow, the temperature fluctuates insanely, and the wind can be so fierce it literally knocks you off your feet. I struggled against it as I struggled against so many other things in my life.

I see myself driving the treacherous roads to get to a job I can’t afford to lose. I see myself walking to college classes when I am eight months pregnant. I see myself frustrated and angry when I get stuck on the road at the bottom of my apartment complex and I have to wade through the drifts with my big pregnant belly to get to my apartment. I finally make it home and throw myself on the bed crying, not sure how I’ll get my truck up the road or how I will raise a baby, fathered by a man I barely know that I met a only a few weeks before I got pregnant.

In the present, with all that behind me…

I have learned a lot about snow. I can predict with fair accuracy whether the accumulation will stick or melt. I know it insulates itself against the sun and the heat, so well in fact that huge piles of snow will last for months. I know that dry snow blows around quite a bit but isn’t as slippery as the wet snow. It’s good for skiing and playing with puppy dogs but not so much for snowballs or snowman. I have learned that man-made snow isn’t really like snow at all. It’s more like shaved ice.

I know that most snows can be overcome with 4-wheel drive, and that anything less than 6 to 8 inches is not worth the effort to get the snowblower out. I know that the process of clearing snow should be done with the understanding that refreeze is so much harder to navigate and clear than the original snow.

Baltimore, Maryland (February 2003)

My parents come to visit for Valentine’s Day and get snowed in — for a week. Over 2 feet of snow falls from the sky. We learn together that cities were not built for snow — at least not this one. There is nowhere to put it. The city literally has to bring in huge dump trucks and truck the snow out to a location where it can be piled or melted.

I am living with my 6-year old son Austin in a row home I bought renovated. It is a quaint and beautiful home, just across the street from Patterson Park, and it works well with my quaint and picturesque life. In our unanticipated family retreat time, we all trek down to the park with Austin bundled up in his warmest clothes and hunter’s cap to sled down the tall hill with the pagoda on the top. All the neighborhood kids are there. Austin has a plastic snow saucer.

Unbeknownst to me, my mother has sprayed the bottom thoroughly with Pam cooking spray, and with a slight push from her Austin takes off at rocket speed down the hill flying off a snow ramp, separating from his snow saucer onto his own flight path, into the snow where he gets the wind knocked out of him. He later reports thinking he was dead. He’s now scared to sled again, and although I’m peeved at my mother for her part in this, it’s a wonderful day — forever burned in my  memory with me standing at the top of the hill by the pagoda watching Austin fly down like a rocket with the ear flaps of his hunter’s cap flapping furiously like wings.

Now (not then)

I love the seasons in Maryland — we get all of them. Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. Early spring, late spring, late summer, early fall. The winters can be snowy and every 3-5 years we get at least one big snow storm. When I turned 40 I learned to snow ski, and I’ve found that to be challenging but tremendous fun.

I’ve learned a few things about staying warm in the snow, all rooted in staying dry and layered. To the extent possible, I’ve found natural fibers to be the best — wool, cotton, down. More important than the thickness of your coat is how many layers and air pockets in your clothes do you have to retain your body heat? Can your skin breathe so you can be comfortable if and when you start to sweat?

Manchester, Maryland (February 2010)

Snowmageddon! A winter storm dumps over 2 feet of snow on us, and the wind blows it in even bigger drifts across the driveway. Austin is 13, and we live in an old country farm house on 3 acres. It’s a sturdy house, about 100 years old, but not exactly conducive to modern living. We freeze all winter, lucky if we can maintain a 55 degree temperature inside, and I wake up extra cold one morning to discover that the front door has blown open. The wood floor in the living room is frozen and covered in a large pile of snow. Austin gets up, and we do our best to get the snow out of the house. The old thin door has swollen in the moisture, and I have to beat it with a hammer to get it closed.

Later Austin and I start clearing the driveway with snow shovels. It’s all we have to work with, except each other and a frozen swollen front door. It’s a tremendous amount of work, tiresome, frustrating, and meant for a snowblower or plow — not 2 shovels. But it’s still good, partly for what we have —  a roof over our heads, warm clothes, two snow shovels — and partly for what we don’t have, which is anyone else there to hurt us. We got rid of those people already, for what I hoped was the last time.

Outside Westminster, Maryland (now)

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