I'm Dreaming Of A...

It's snowing again.

When I was a child, I prayed very very hard throughout the month of December. Mostly my requests were selfish at best--that on Christmas day I would receive the things I wanted, that my ensemble would sing better than any other during the school Christmas performance, etc. Always at the top of my prayer list was the request for a white Christmas. I can remember only once when we had an actual white Christmas. The next year, I prayed doubly hard for a repeat performance, but didn't get it. One year, we had snow the week before, and my father tried to comfort me.

"See, there's snow on the ground," he said, "so it's still a white Christmas."

To my young and dissatisfied mind? Hardly.

This year, it seems I will have my white Christmas, and even though a heavy snow storm will keep me from seeing at least half of my family members on the day, a part of me is thrilled at the chance of it. I can still feel the child-side of me hopping up and down a little at the beauty and mystery of falling snow.

I'm beginning to think that as we age, we stop lifting up our faces to feel those small, wet, white crystal feathers chilling our cheeks, and instead we only see the brown slush in the gutters and the chain checks and the ice patches. I can feel this transformation of childish awe to adult practicality taking place within me, I must admit. My car is an igloo-shaped lump bordered on three sides by a berm of snow four feet tall, and it will probably stay that way for another week at least because I'm disheartened at the very thought of the work it will take to rescue it.

More snow, says the weather forecast? Well, isn't that just great.

The snow falling tonight isn't like the snow storm we had last week. This snow pecks and scratches at the windows, like some bird trying to get in. Frankly, the sound is a little unnerving to me at the moment. I doubt it would unsettle me quite so much if it were day. Or if we hadn't already had three feet of snow the week before.

And yet, I still caught myself singing "Let It Snow" this evening.