David Heiller
The sound woke me out of a restless
sleep early Monday morning. A big vehicle moving north on Hillside Road, going
nice and slow, with a deep rumble and scrape.
I had to smile. A snowplow.
I followed the sound with my ears,
then got up and looked out the bathroom window as it passed by the house. The
ground was covered with white.
Snow had been spitting down the night
before, but I didn't have much faith in the effort. And in fact it wasn't a big
snow, just a couple inches of wet stuff.
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| A pre-plow walk in a wintry wonderland. |
But it's a start.
Some readers might think I'm crazy
to wish for snow. It's like wishing for bad luck or illness to some folks. But
to me, winter doesn't seem like winter, nor Christmas like Christmas, without
snow,
Grandma's chocolate cookies don't
taste quite right. The birds at the feeders don't seem as happy. The woods look
bleak and gray.
But add that white to the ground,
and the air lightens up. Things look brighter in more ways than one. I get a
spring in my step not unlike the one that hits in April when the snow finally
leaves. Go figure.
Some readers might think I'm crazy
to wish for snow. It's like wishing for bad luck or illness to some folks. But
to me, winter doesn't seem like winter, nor Christmas like Christmas, without
snow,
Grandma's chocolate cookies don't
taste quite right. The birds at the feeders don't seem as happy. The woods look
bleak and gray.
But add that white to the ground,
and the air lightens up. Things look brighter in more ways than one. I get a
spring in my step not unlike the one that hits in April when the snow finally
leaves. Go figure.
I don't like to over-analyze
things, but a couple other things come with snow. One is a connection to the
past. It's partly rose-colored glasses, but those days as a kid sledding and
ice skating and ice fishing, those trips to church for the candlelight service,
even the Vikings games on TV, they all had snow in them. The first snowfall of
the year, especially in December as the Christmas season hits full-force,
reconnects me to that.
But mainly snow helps me feel that
things are just the way they are supposed to be. We live in Minnesota. It's
supposed to snow in December. Bring it on! That's the way God planned it, if
you will.
Seeing that new snow is somehow
reassuring, at a time when the world needs a little reassuring.
Last but not least, snow gives us
something to complain about. Good-natured grumbling goes a long way to making a
Minnesotan happy.
So that covers it. Let it snow.
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