Snow

Every time the snow falls I become overwhelmed with a feeling unlike any other; a mix of happiness, coziness, warmth, and relaxation. As far back as I can remember, I've experienced a very snowy winter. I've walked through miles of it to get to the school bus, gotten trapped in it more times than I can count, and had all sorts of fun in it. I remember that as a child, I would build snowmen in the yard and prepare fortresses stocked full of snowballs. Whenever I shoveled the driveway with my brothers, we would compete to get the most snow on "our side," and "our side" was the land we claimed in the yard to have snowball fights over. We built the snowmen to populate each of our sides, and it was a big deal whenever one of us hit one of them: we each spent a lot of time on our snowmen. One year, I recall the snow going up to my head on either side of the driveway. I had to kick in a foothold in what was to me a wall of icy snow in order to get up onto my side of the yard. I remember that whenever my mother or father used the snowblower on the driveway, they would try to aim the exhaust for the snow towards a pile by the front porch so we could use our sleds. They were only ever 3 or 4 feet tall, but it still felt fun to go down on the sled and skate on the icy driveway on the mornings of the weekend. We also used to collect the biggest icicles from the roof and hide them. At some point, they became a currency that we exchanged for snowballs or sled time. Nowadays I don't spend much time out in the snow, but every year it seems like it snows less and less, and much later than the year previous. I fear one day soon it will be gone forever in Michigan, so I need to start making the most out of it while it's still here.

The snow makes me especially happy because it often meant a snow day if there was enough of it. Almost every year while I went to school in Kalamazoo, the first big snowing would be responded to with a snow day. Throughout the year, we often had days off at a time as big storms came through; one week during my sophomore year of high school, we had classes for one day out of the five we were supposed to. Even though it's incredibly unlikely that we'll get a snow day at U of M, it makes me happy to see the snow fall just so that I can get the old feeling of getting snowed inside for the day, where I can drink plenty of coffee or hot chocolate and enjoy a cozy, warm day to myself.