I just want to write about the snow

We get two good snows a year in Knoxville. One will be during “normal snow time” between December and February. And we will always get one in mid-March when no one wants it anymore.

But today, we’re in normal snow time, and I am happy.

I grew up in the county outside Johnson City in a big white house on a hill. There’s pictures of me in a puffy red snowsuit playing in the “Blizzard of 93”(the same blizzard my wife was born during). The only thing I vaguely remember is that our snowman lasted a few days before he moved on to Snowman Heaven. Our hill was perfect for sledding if you moved away from the barn. Otherwise, you were liable to end up inside the barn because the speed would surely take you through the old batten siding.

There are two bodily feelings in life that reach the level of pure, unadulterated bliss. Likely the closest we can surmise to what it felt like in the Garden of Eden. One is when you’re at the beach, spend all day in the sand, get a little sunburnt, and then come home and take a shower. The feeling after the shower when you put on clean clothes (especially socks): bliss. The second feeling is after a snow day, getting a shower that stings a little because your skin is so cold, and then putting on your snuggliest outfit and sipping hot chocolate by the window. Even for a kid who spent his whole life inundated by cable television, nothing compares to watching the snow fall outside.

We had a four-person toboggan sled my mom had ordered from an L.L. Bean catalog. I don’t have a specific memory of this, but I’m pretty sure Mom only got all three of us boys to go on it once, despite our protests that we all wanted our own sled. We had those plastic deals that could be used for sledding or catching the used stuff during an oil change.

When I was 11, we moved into the city. One year, it snowed during normal snow time on December 17th. Johnson City Schools always had a half-day before Christmas Break, and that’s when our middle school hall would have a Christmas Party. My mom baked dozens of Cinnamon Rolls, but then it snowed; they canceled school, so we had dozens of cinnamon rolls at home waiting for me when I got back in from building snow forts with my neighbors Matthew, Jacob, and Tanner. We made the forts but didn’t have a snowball fight because we were all pretty passive kids. I remember I named mine Helm’s Deep because The Two Towers was in theaters.

I remember two snows in college at the University of Tennessee. During one, I went for a run around campus, and for reasons I do not remember, I listened to “Let’s Groove” by Earth, Wind, and Fire and had a time. During the other snow, when it started falling one night, my roommate Dakota and I got in his old red Dodge truck (he named her Roxy). There weren’t any campus cops out, so Dakota drove Roxy up Pedestrian Walkway and blasted his Dukes of Hazard horn to everyone studying at Hodges Library.

I don’t know what it is about snow that sets it apart from other days. But every snowfall is a story. Because what is a story but moments that are set apart from others? Moments that our minds hold onto, moments that carry some meaning, whether we’re aware of it or not.

I don’t know if it’s good to be aware when moments are set apart. It seems like it would add some pressure to make the most of it. But now we’re getting into too much deep thinking for a snow day. The coffee pot just dinged her happy song and my wife put biscuits in the oven.