Snow Day!

Remember those snow days when we were kids?

We didn't have the Weather Channel, Accu-Weather, or Doppler 5, 000,000 (yes, I know. I make it sound like these technological advances are reliable). We had a guy in a plaid jacket and seventies-wavy hair standing in front of a monochrome map with cardboard suns, clouds, H's and L's waving his hands as if conjuring.

And, he gazed hopefully into the camera. Hopeful that we'd believe his forecasts, and hopeful that he would be right. Most of the time he failed, becoming a weather seducer who couldn't deliver the goods.

So we'd hear snow and cross our fingers and pray, only to wake up to grey skies and brown lawns. But, every once in a while, the weatherman would call for empty skies, and we'd wake up to steadily falling snow. Snow on the cars, snow on the trees, snow on the lawns, and - most importantly - snow on the hilly roads the school buses had to navigate.

Snow day!

My Dad would growl about the need to shovel, and curse the passing plows who undid his hard work, but Mom understood. There was nothing more magical than an unexpected day with nowhere to go and no means to get there. Snowmen, snow angels, and Devereaux Hill sled runs awaited!

See, when you are used to the unrelenting brown and grey of the southeastern Pennsylvania winter, the white winterland truly is a wonder. So today, after the weather-scientists forecasted no precipitation, or a snow shower, or a dusting maybe, the snow began to fall. Steadily.

Ooops.

Oh.

It stopped.

No, now it's started again.