Growing up in a non-religious household, prayer was never a natural instinct of mine.  I didn’t feel very connected to faith, and rarely even thought about it.  There was, however, one exception.  There was one thing that I wanted so badly, I was willing to lay aside my skepticism.  On cold winter nights, I would sit on my bed with my eyes tightly shut, and I would silently pray for snow.

In the southeastern United States, snow days really did require divine intervention.  They only came a couple of times a year, and when they did, you would have thought the sky was falling.  Every grocery store would be completely out of bread and milk.  Roads would be salted and closed.  Usually, the governor would declare a state of emergency.  Keep in mind, all of this chaos was thanks to one inch of snow.  You can imagine the apocalypse that took place the year we got five inches.

I relished this atmosphere of yearly danger—it was like a little adventure, but without any real risk.  I think it’s really very fun that everyone would pretend this semi-regular occurrence was a threat.  Though I certainly enjoyed this safe panic, and a few days of cancelled school, the real reason I looked forward to snow days so much was snow itself. 

Loving snow was basically one of my core personality traits.  I enjoyed the usual things, like sledding and snowmen-assembling, but really, I would have been content to just stand among it.  When the sky turned white, I would scramble outside and wait for it to drift onto my ungloved hands.  I would watch as the snow fell into clumps that would slowly melt away, revealing each individual flake.  Then I would toss them into the air, and it would look as if it were snowing all over again.  Looking back, Nobody, I must say that I was quite a whimsical creature.  Considering I’m speaking to what is essentially an imaginary friend, I don’t think that very much has changed.

But what has changed, I sorry to say, is my attitude towards snow.  I no longer love it.  I don’t even worship it.  I just think it’s…fine.

Maybe I’ve been desensitized to it.  I do go to school in the northeast, where I have been introduced to a kind of snow that does not mess around.  Or maybe it’s become too commonplace to me; the ordinary, after all, can’t ever be magic.  Or maybe—most fearful of all—I’m just grown-up.  Whatever the reason, it’s given me a small crisis of identity.

It would be easier if I hated snow.  That would be intriguing and logical character development.  Instead, I could simply take it or leave it. 

As I’ve grown, my concept of snow has expanded alongside me.  It doesn’t just mean a hazy white wonderland anymore.  It means heavy boots, trudging to class in the cold and wet, shut down roads when there are places that I’d rather be.  And I’ve also come to realize that all the fuss over the danger of snow wasn’t entirely unwarranted.

It’s normal, I know, to change.  But I had hoped that I wouldn’t mature.  There’s something undeniably tragic about childhood treasures growing up with you.  I wish that, if I couldn’t, snow days would have stayed uncomplicated.

But, despite all of my adult “wisdom,” a small part of me is still a little bit enchanted by it.  The first flakes can still send a thrill through me, even if my next thought is about wet socks.  For a few brief moments, I can feel that exact same spark of magic.  I can know what it was like to be so filled with awe over something of this world.  I can remember what it was like to make my own wonder. 

So maybe I do still love snow days.  At least, I love what they once were: joy, pure and uncomplicated.  And I’m glad to know that memory could never melt away.

Talk again soon, I hope.