The Freedom of the Snow Day

The almighty snow day.  This great interference in the march of the school year.  A break from reality and the stresses we faced.  I wasn’t good at doing my homework or caring about long range projects as a student – from the earliest grades and even up until grad school.  But the snow day broke that cycle.  Nothing could be collected.  Nothing could be assigned.  I don’t know how it is for kids in the 21^st century classroom, but teachers did not take advantage of the so-called wasted time. 

                I remember stomping down the steps of whichever suburban Philly rowhome I was living in at the time.  Just enough steps to see out the window of the front door.  4 or 5 steps.  I was loud, always accused of being an elephant coming down the steps.  But I still thought I was doing something secretive.  And the outside world would appear through a tiny window.  Sometimes a single window which was normally too high for my portly body to reach.  But this perch offered me everything.  The view to the answer that would seal my fate for the day.  Unbridled cold, icicles, snowball fights and games?  Or a frigid death march to the children’s coop?  I will describe both things, and I hope that you might have your memories stirred, too, about each of these days.

First:  snow!  The white stuff had landed on the ground!  Maybe a dusting or a few inches on all of our fathers’ cars lined up outside.  Those poor guys had to get their steal boats to their jobs while we were going to be raiding their garage supplies to build the forthcoming snow neighborhood.  The house was warm, and I could spy the cold, and I yearned for it.  Mom is already in the kitchen, an impish, all-knowing look on her face.  She tries to keep the calm, knowing the battle was lost even before it was begun.  Next, at least in my part of the world, the radio was turned on.  The fuzzy static of the AM news station.  I most fondly remember that my grandmother had this station on every night as she went to sleep.  When it was only dialed in during the day for this glorious happening.  The torture, that anticipation, the agony of not knowing!  There was no order to the numbers.  We didn’t know if our cousins in the next town would hear their number, and we never bothered to learn it anyway.  Would the parochial school be off too?  It took nearly a quarter hour for all of the numbers to be read.  And ours was 626.

105, 107, 108.  What happened to the poor fools in 106?  It was like a lottery.

238, 239, 257.  I give up.  I like logic puzzles, but this is too much!  Who assigned these numbers in this demonic fashion?  Just tell me about 626!

352, 358, 359.  Hopes were abandoned.  And now my younger brother is bored with staring at the block latticed speaker and decides to talk.  I can’t silently will him to shut up any more than I already am.   400s.  500s.  And here come the six hundreds.  Time was both slowing down with anticipation and speeding up with the possibility of impending bad news.  616, 620, 621, 622.  The old man at some newsdesk take second to clear his throat.  What if he skipped a number when he turned his head?  625.

626!  He said it!  The pajamaed mopheaded boys gathered around the radio throw their hands up in a victory, a breakfast bowl is jostled enough to spill a few drops, but no one hears Mom trying to call the motley crew back to order.  The day has come!  A day of nothing was ahead of us.  The limitlessness of the day, when freedom was bestowed, gave hope to the young ones who often feel jostled, manipulated and pressed into doing all manner of unwanted functions.  But today even the very act of creation was left up to the children.  In a few hours, the neighborhood would be full of forts, snowmen, snowball fight battlefields and all surrounded by the imprints of the angelically behaving children.

Second:  I raced down the few steps to the watchman’s nest.  The windows of the front door coming into view.  The windows are only showing one color: White.  This could be that glorious day.  The mind begins to swirl.  But then it focuses in.  You see, it had snowed a few times before this season, and ice is a constant problem.  The salt trucks are everywhere and their discharge gets on every surface.  The cars are all covered in the white patina, which from a distance offers the false hope that I was hoping for.  Maybe there is a flurry sticking to the windshield wipers or edges of the door frames.  But it ain’t looking good.  We head for the radio, but there is Mom.  At one time a herald of joy, now with a more dour look.  “Yous have school today.”  And with that, it’s over.  The march to our neon lighted pens would begin shortly.  And we would be held there until some arbitrary bell sent us back into the sharply frigid alleyways.

I write these memories from many years later.  Years of games and heartaches.  A lifetime of joyful memories and dreadful regrets, and all sorts of experiences in between.  What I realize now is that I learned from both of my youthful experiences.  The utter freedom and potential for creation of the snowday is a reminder of that it means to be truly human.  The day where we must be educated shows us the importance of cultivating the person and honing the hopes of each of us.  30 years later I can tell you that I am glad for my education – both formally and with every mentor who has taken the time to impart their wisdom.  And I am increasingly thankful every day for the freedom with which I was created.  I yearn for living a life through that God-given freedom, and I embrace my responsibility to be joyous because of it.