Blizzards done right

As a staunch Yankee, I firmly believe that snow should fall in winter. Global warming has been hard on me. I feel for the folks who were hit this past weekend in the areas not equipped for it, but in New England, winter feels barren without a really great blizzard.

When I was a kid, snow days were only given if there was a dire threat of death. Seriously. We gathered for the bus at the top of a hill with the Robinson and Downing kids (because we’re Gen X and could walk down the street to be picked up in clumps, rather than the bus having to stop at every single driveway). If it was snowy, the bus would have chains. Once, the bus slid sideways down the hill. No big deal. A snow day was rare and warranted—snow so deep you couldn’t walk in it. We’d be banished outside, get so cold and wet our mittens froze solid and our fingers and toes went numb, and the day seemed to last forever.

When my kids were little, my love of snow days continued. “Snow day!” I’d call, and they’d leap out of bed, get dressed in their snowsuits and go out before the sun rose, our dog leaping and barking with joy. I made cocoa and baked chocolate chip cookies. The girls from down street, whose mom was an essential worker, would be dropped off, and the four kids would cavort and sled and built tunnels, then come in and fill our big mudroom with boots and hats and mittens, all of which would have to be thrown in the dryer, then sorted. Puddles would form on the mud room floors, which I would inevitably step in. Sometimes I’d bring them home on our toboggan, all four pink-cheeked kids in a row, the littlest one tucked in front of my daughter, the oldest of the bunch. Recently, I visited with one of those girls. “Those were some of the best days of my childhood,” she said. They were some of the best days of my adult life, too.

McIrish was often called in to work on big snow days. I still like to remind him of those days when I was not only in charge of our small ones, but also kept the fire going in our wood-burning furnace, started the generator, got the kids to shovel the walk and snow-blew the entire driveway. For our twenty-fifth anniversary, he gave me a new snowblower. “What dat?” the Peeper asked when he was about one and a half, looking at the big machine in the shed. “Dat Gup’s?”

“No, honey, that’s Nonnie’s,” I said. He looked at me with fresh awe. 

This past weekend, both McIrish and Firefighter Mike were scheduled to work, so I asked my daughter if she’d like to bring the little ones here for a sleepover. They came in the morning, and we took them sledding in the frigid cold, then came in to warm up and eat, then read and play, then repeat. I made a nice dinner and a sticky toffee pudding per the Princess’s request—it was her birthday eve. We ate early and sang, and both kids helped their mommy blow out the three candles that represent the three beautiful decades of her life. Then came bath time in our deep tub, which the Peeper loves and the Butterfly does not. The Princess cleaned up the kitchen while I made waterfalls and played with the shark and rubber duckies.

When my little grandchildren were cozy, I made the Princess and myself gin martinis, and we spent the next couple of hours talking. “I really wanted a big snow storm for my birthday,” she said as we watched the snow pelt down. “Mother Nature was listening,” I said.

It was such a wonderful day, readers. I got to spend the evening remembering the very best day of my life—the day I became a mother—with the person who made me one, her own little bairns snug upstairs. My love for the Princess has only grown these past thirty years. And you know what? It was another best day of my life. Who says we only get one?