Snow Day

I originally wrote this essay on December 14 of 2017. Some of you in the Midwest may be having a snow day very soon. Seemed like a good time to share this.

Have you ever woken up in the dark, just before dawn, still half in a dream…except it’s the sort of dream that you can’t remember any of the details of? All you have is the emotional residue from wherever it was that the dream had just taken you.

Sometimes, you’re left with a strong sense of longing for something; except you can’t quite put your finger on what, exactly, it was. A feeling, a vague emotional state, something shrouded in mist, leftover from that dream world.

At that moment of being half-awake, the dream is an unfinished storyline—a thin thread of thoughts left dangling. But it hovers out of reach, just below the surface of your consciousness.

“What was it?” you ask yourself, trying to remember the dream…but whatever it was doesn’t come forward. You wake up with the emotions, but no story to tie them to.

Today, that happened to me. It was a cold morning, and when I stepped into the shower, the warm water enveloped me.  It drummed on my head in just the right way so as to snap me back into that residual sense of longing, and then … I remembered part of the dream.

I was longing for a snow day. In my dream, I was reliving a warm memory from when I was much younger. Not everyone understands this “snow day” feeling, because not everyone grew up experiencing snow days; but for those of us who did, you’ll understand.

In the depths of winter, on some cold nights in the Midwest, you’d fall asleep snuggled in a warm bed—but there was an unspoken anticipation, a tension, a sense that something was about to happen. Snow was coming.  Sometimes, you knew that because you’d heard the weather forecast; other times, you just … knew.

At times like these, had the clouds been as heavily laden during the summer as they were right then, the beginning of the rainfall would have startled you in the middle of the night, waking you with a gentle but firm pounding on the roof as the heavy water droplets plinked on the windowpane and drummed overhead. 

Right now, in the depths of winter, the same volume of water would fall—only on this frigid night, the water falls silently. Big, lazy snowflakes. It wouldn’t wake you, but maybe you’d subconsciously sense the start of it anyhow, and you’d burrow down just a little deeper into the warm blankets.

You’d wake up in the hour before dawn, and something about the quiet, and the way the streetlamps shone a bit differently through your window would be your first clue. Snow!  A jolt of excitement would get you out of bed, and you’d go look out the frosty window after rubbing a layer of inside frost off the glass.

The world you remembered from the night before was completely transformed! All of the sharp edges of the world were gone, now just subtle bumps and smooth curves; and the color of most everything was a monochrome shade of purple that would become a brilliant white when the sun finally came out. 

But right now, in the predawn darkness, it was something else.

I would go outside at times like that, to breathe in the experience more deeply. In my neighborhood, the streetlamps would cast cones of light down from the darkness, and if the snow was still falling, it would sometimes give the illusion that the streetlamps themselves were the source of the snow, because you’d only see the heavy flakes in their cone of light.

And then you’d notice the eerie silence. The new blanket of velvety ice crystals absorbed all the usual night sounds, and the lack of noise would awaken your mind because of the sheer contrast with what you expected to hear.

The whole world was different at that moment…cold, soft, draped in curvy velvet, dark, silent.  Stunningly beautiful. Obvious details that you’d have easily spotted the day before were now hidden secrets.

And if you were a child, you’d check the depth of the snow… is it just enough? Will it stick? Are the roads still unplowed? Yes!  A snow day!

In that moment, your world was transformed again: because you knew you’d be staying home from school. In that moment, you’d feel a sense of relief, experience an escape from the normal everyday routine. A day of work or study instead became a day to relax, a day to put away your cares and worries, to live in the moment with a warm mug of cocoa, snuggle with a favorite book by the fireplace, or a day to play and build snowmen and forts and fantastic snow sculptures.

School would wait for tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. A snow day, maybe two.  A gift from God.

Because on days like that, not only was your world fresh and new in the bright dawn light, when everything you could see was transformed by a soft, silent brilliant blanket of white—but that chance to put aside your worries, if only for a day, transformed you, too.  

An oasis of time suddenly appeared like a gift in the desert of normal existence.

If you grew up in places where it snowed enough for “snow days” … well, then you understand. There’s nothing quite like a “snow day” to relax, reset, and recharge.

I woke up today with a sense of longing for a snow day. Wanting to remember what it felt like to be free of worry and care if only for a day or two, with nothing to do but play, to be warmed by a fire, and to laugh and run and be in the world.

And then, another piece of the prior night’s dream fell into place. I woke up with a sense of longing for a snow day, because the warmth, and joy, and softness, and the lightness of being… the oasis of time in which you experience that suddenly-transformed world—is also what it feels like when you are in love.

I wanted to remember what it felt like to have a snow day. I wanted to remember what it felt like to be loved. Both are sources of comfort that I hadn’t experienced in so long. I was searching for that oasis in my dreams.

As the warm water of the shower fell in soft rivulets over me, I closed my eyes, and I remembered, fully now, what the sense of longing I woke up with was actually for.