For as long as i can remember, one of the great loves in my life revolved around one single 4 letter word – snow! I guess you might be able to say that I was destined to love the white stuff, as I was born a little earlier than expected in the middle of a fierce snowstorm, to a mom with no car who was left alone with another almost 4 year old while my Dad was away on a business trip. Everything did work out OK, as my Mom managed to call a taxi cab and get us to the hospital to complete my arrival. These old feelings all came back to me the day after Christmas this year, on our drive home from spending Christmas day at my son Scott’s house in Durham NC. I have always lived in the north, all cold areas, all prone to snow and miserable winter weather. The last 23 years our family, or what was left of it after the kids mostly moved away, was in the state of Vermont, not exactly a place for warmth and sun loving people. In some ways it was okay, as you had warm sometimes even hot and sticky summers, but then again almost no springs and very short falls, with the rest of the time paying close attention to weather predictions. We ran a Motel and during those years with over 6000 square feet of driveway that needed to be clear of the white stuff, my fondness of snow teetered on the edge of hatred, as so much time was spent either shoveling it together with my wife, or pushing snow away from the buildings making the parking spaces accessible to the snow plow. My wife would head back to the laundry room in the morning and if the cold wasn’t bad enough whistling around the corners, so many days held the added thrill of having the snow blowing across the lot and just making life miserable to venture outside. So many of our evenings were spent with her and me clearing the parking lot and trying to stay one step ahead of Mother Nature and another impending storm. You would work so hard the cold wouldn’t bother you as much as the snow covered faces and the “white out” of your glasses as you took a few minutes to warm and rest up in the warm and comfy laundry room, and simply dread the thought of having to face it all over again in a few minutes. I think as much as anything this helped us reach the decision to finally say uncle, and dream of spending our retirement years in a warmer and sunnier place. We picked the state of North Carolina to spend our retirement winters, and although it was not exactly balmy in the winter, it would have cold spells that actually saw temperatures dip below that magical number of 32, it held very little threat of snow storms. I guess though I have always had winter in my blood, because as much as I loved our new home, it was missing something very important that made winter actually winter. This all came rushing back to me those few weeks ago on that drive home in the snow. So many memories flooded my brain of how snow had in many ways helped shape my life. I remember so clearly when I was very young and so enjoyed going sledding on 
what was the “dirt” hill in the summer and of course the “snow” hill in the winter or having snowball fights in the city streets and utilizing the parked cars as our forts and finally under great duress would head home with my nose d
rippings frozen to my coats zipper and all the way up to my nose – hardly noticing it at all as after all, the fun in the snow was the main thing. As I grew older, and my parents moved to a house out of the city it had what was then called a Florida room, which was just a room with lots and lots of windows, and I would sit out there on stormy snowy nights, and watch for hours the snow falling and blowing in the street lights outside – to me it was sheer magic. As I became an adult and started a family of my own, we eventually moved to our first house in the mountains of northern New Jersey, and I guess now looking back, it was foolish and reckless thing to do, but I would take my young children for rides up into the mountains on logging roads and just be mesmerized by watching the snow dance and whirl in our headlights. I would stop the car and leave the lights on and just watch the snowflakes fall and jump with every small gust of wind and be amazed at the peacefulness of sitting there in the special quiet that you can only find in the falling snow. We all grew up some more and graduated to having and taking snowmobile rides in the midst of a freezing snowstorm and leaving my wife behind as she was much fonder of staying warm and thinking she was the only sane one among us. Again, the thrill of driving through the countless number of those beautiful snowflakes racing at your headlight and stopping every now and then to enjoy that special “quiet” that you can only find under those conditions. It was soon after that when our life change came and we moved to Vermont and started our business at the motel. Snow slowly became more and more a stranger to me, as in the beginning I would still hop in the car and take a drive up the mountain into the snow, and it still held the same beauty for me, but the knowledge was there that when I came down the mountain and back to the motel, that beautiful stuff would become more and more of a visitor I hoped would pass us by. As a new storm would approach, and the first flakes would start to fall, it would still stir up something deep inside me, but now it meant only hard work and sore muscles. And so it was for the next couple dozen years, our thoughts turned to hopes of finally enjoying warmer winters and driveways that were always snow free.
That was up until that drive home a couple of weeks ago, in the rare snowstorm we were blessed with down here in south land on Christmas weekend. By the standards we had become accustomed to up north, this was far from a noteworthy snowstorm, but then again we were in the south where these things just don’t happen, and as prepared as they liked to say they were, the snow plow drivers were doing their best but had apparently missed the training sessions on how to properly clear the major streets AND their cross streets at the same time. It was major for down here and also major for me in a completely different way. Santa Claus had surely given me a “special” present this year. During the ride home, the thoughts and memories flooded my mind of how snow used to mean so much to me, and bring me so much joy. The trees were heavy with white and looked like something out of a fairy tale. 
Children were building actual snow people in their yards, and 
you could feel the excitement it held for them. An occasional gust of wind would whip it up and blow it in all directions, just like I remembered it so many years ago. That night after we arrived home, we watched a little on the news channel about the storm and after my wife went off to bed, I opened our front door and looked out through our glass storm door at the street light down the road and watched and listened for quite a while, as the snow kept falling and swirling about, turning everything white ……. and to my delight once again it was pure magic.
