I think it’s glorious that Mother Nature blanketed us with snow on the second day of Spring. This winter hasn’t given the D.C. area a day like this, and I know that while all of us here are grumbling, groaning and complaining―deep down, we revel in it.
It’s proof that the alarm clock may not be almighty, that our everyday routines can be uprooted and thrown into chaos, that we really cannot accomplish that dreaded task we said absolutely had to get done today at the office. We can’t get out of our own homes. We’re weighed down by inaccessibility to the rest of the world and the danger of the roads.
Yet I know that mothers or father revel in the fact there is no need to get little Jimmy to the bus stop by 8:30. Jimmy and his brothers and sisters savor the feeling of bedcovers a little longer, then spring out of bed ready to celebrate the get-out-of-jail-card feeling of canceled school.
We need these kinds of days to wash our souls―to remind us we are not always in charge. There will always be surprises at hand!
Even if we are one of the hundreds of people who run to the store to stock up on enough eggs and diapers to last weeks past the one day the snow is expected to stay, part of the process of a winter storm is visualizing post apocalypse scenarios. What would we do if electricity, water, computers, cars were not a given? My God, what if pizza delivery and seven-11s didn’t exist ! ?
As our brains are busy grinding out the what ifs, our eyes are feasting: black tree bark painted with vanilla frosting; mounds of sugary powder everywhere; a veil of blinding whiteness falling from the sky; the blank slate of sidewalks and hills just before they are invaded by boots and sleighs.
And suddenly the pictures of doomsday and danger are replaced by one thought: it sure is beautiful.–Genilee Swope Parente
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