Trares
Well, the snow finally came.
And kept coming and coming and coming.
With it came multiple days without leaving the house, nearly a week off of school, lots of e-learning and a mild case of cabin fever.
Anthony had been bemoaning the lack of winter weather in recent weeks. After a chilly December that brought a significant snowfall — enough for sledding, at least — January had been relatively quiet. We would watch the news in the morning to see dozens of schools on delays or cancellations due to cold or snow, while not a peep from our school district.
He kept telling me in no uncertain terms about his disappointment.
“Why do we have to go to school when they don’t?” he dramatically asked.
“I only got to go sledding one time!” he said, as if in previous years he had spent every afternoon and weekend on a snowy hill.
“It has to snow again — I never even made a snowman!” Oh, the horror.
But Anthony was energized as we went through last week and into the weekend. What had started as a possible snow event quickly came into focus as a winter-weather behemoth. Forecasters were calling for 8 to 12 inches by the time it was all over.
Like the rest of the world, we prepared. I braved the grocery store to get supplies for the weekend and into the week — necessities such as milk and produce, as well as fun food to keep us happy through the cold outside.
There was a whole plan. Because the snow wasn’t supposed to hit until late on Saturday, we could do something fun as a family before we were house-bound for who knows how long. We decided to go bowling — Anthony almost broke 100 — and enjoy a nice lunch before we headed back home and settled in.
As it got dark the first flakes started to fall. Still, it didn’t seem like the snow-pocalypse everyone had been worried about.
If there were any concerns about the accuracy of the forecasts when we went to bed, they were put to rest when we woke up to find everything covered in powdery white. Our back patio table was covered in 8 inches already (we went out and measured it with a tape measure). Our driveway and the roads in our neighborhood were impassable.
We were snowed in.
That first day was like a little vacation. We didn’t have anything we needed to do; even if wanted to get out, there was no way we were getting on the roads.
So Anthony and my wife lazed around a little while I made a first pass at shoveling the driveway.
When I got back in, after warming up for a few minutes, I posed the question Anthony had been waiting all day to hear: “Want to go outside to play?” He darted upstairs to put on his winter weather gear before I could say another word.
Properly bundled, we went out to face the cold. The snow wasn’t great for packing, so we couldn’t make a snowman. A snowball fight didn’t work out either; we ended up just flinging powdery snow at each other, until some of it went down Anthony’s coat and we made a truce.
But we found other ways to entertain ourselves. We kicked the soccer ball around in the snow, a challenge as it disappeared into the drifts every time we kicked it.
In the middle of the yard, we sculpted a “snow fort” — really, just a huge bowl in the snow with high walls, almost like a football stadium. Still, Anthony sat inside like he was the king of his own castle.
School was called off on Monday, then on Tuesday, then again on Wednesday. We weren’t sure Anthony was ever going to wear anything but pajamas again.
I think we were all getting a little stir crazy a few days in, so it was a kind of relief when school went back in session and I was able to get out to work.
There still hasn’t been any sledding yet; it’s too cold even for me to brave those wind chills.
But the good news is that the sub-freezing temperatures means the snow isn’t going anywhere soon. And it looks like we could be in for more snow on Sunday.
Let’s do it all again.
Ryan Trares is a senior reporter and columnist for the Daily Journal. Send comments to editorial@therepublic.com.
