Where are the Snows of Yesteryear?

Okay, let’s give the French poet Francois Villon credit for this wonderful expression.  And, maybe, let’s take it literally for the moment.  That’s because I’m looking outside my window at what might be the last snow of this year.  One can only hope!

I’m sure there was a time in my life when I was excited by snow.  Isn’t every child?  Oh, the possibilities, including a snow day where you didn’t have to go to school.  How many times did we sit around the kitchen table, listening to the radio announcements, hoping our school would shut down—and how many times didn’t that happen?  Sigh.

Unlike today, where parents drive their children to school, even if they live two blocks away, in my day, as we old folks say, we used to walk to school, no matter what the weather.  I lived only three-fourths of a mile from my elementary school, but the trip was made four times a day, as at that time there was no lunchroom and we all had to walk home for lunch.  Or ride our bikes.  But bike riding was made perilous by Billy Schmidt’s collie that would race after me and try to bite my ankle.  Dare I say I wasn’t exactly sad when someone poisoned it.  (Please, no hate mail.)

In the snow the walks to school and back again became arduous because girls weren’t allowed to wear pants.  We had to be in dresses or skirts.  This meant either a snow suit or snow pants and then there were those galoshes with the impossible metal buckles.

But school aside, there could be fun in the snow because there always seemed to be plenty of it.  Otherwise, how could we build snow forts and rocket snowballs back and forth at one another?  Then there was the hill behind our house where we’d go sledding every day.  Someone would always have to go first to bank down the path so the rest of us could gain speed, avoiding rocks and tree roots until we hit the creek; and, when the creek was frozen, we might even start up the opposite hill.  True, after we raced down, we’d have to drag our sleds up for another run, but that’s the price we paid for winter fun.

But sledding wasn’t our only winter activity. All of us had ice skates and could hardly wait for the pond to freeze so that we could zip along on it, sometimes making a swirling chain until someone fell; then we’d all topple.  Sometimes the pond was unavailable because the brutes would take it over for hockey.  Thus it was that my brother lost his two front teeth.

Does anything freeze that deeply now?  How well I remember going out on a lake with my skates, joining my father for ice fishing.  It was fun and frightening at the same time.  Ice cracks loudly as it shifts; and I always wondered, no matter how thick the ice was, if I would soon find myself in the water.

When did all that winter fun start to sour?  Probably when elementary school was over.  Since our town didn’t have a high school, we had to take the school bus five miles to a neighboring town.  That meant making sure we got to the bus stop on time and then waiting in the cold for it to arrive.  Painful.

Then there was my first driving test, taken after a snow, where I slid into the curb and failed.  May I say that driving tests have been a trauma ever since?

Now I’m old, living in a cold climate, wishing I could be a snow bird and travel to warmer climes when the first flakes fall.  But circumstances deem otherwise.  October rolls around, the grass dies along with my optimistic outlook on life.  The sun leaves us and clouds become our natural state of being as winter arrives.  Depression takes hold, knowing the long months of darkness creep closer.

Is it any wonder that when February arrives I look for signs of spring?

February, you’re saying.  Isn’t that a bit early?  Well, yes and no.  It seems where I live, despite the gloom, is in the midst of global warming in that we’ve had the warmest winter on record with minimal snow fall, but plenty of rain.  We’re assured that our section of the country will become a place of migration, as people flee the unbearably hot south, the lack of water in the west, and move to the comforts of a moderate clime along the Great Lakes.

So why should I complain about this one last snowfall?  Because complaining is something I’m well known for.  Besides, it would be nice to see the sun.  Occasionally.  However, the hundred early spring bulbs I planted several years ago, not as deep as suggested, have dared to open when they feel safe, the hyacinths have made a lackluster appearance.  No daffodils yet and the forsythia seems rather lame this year.  But there is hope that some day soon I won’t have to layer myself in protective covering to take a walk or get the mail or cut down the buckthorn.

Of course, Villon asking about the snows of yesteryear is also asking where have the years gone.  As the seasons turn, I always wonder how many more rebirths I’ll be around to see.  The birds migrating, the flowers blooming, the sun heating the earth, my being a part of it all?  Well, so far, so good.  I move on to complain again another day.