Snow Day
Looking out the window this morning at the wonderful world of white, and thinking about the “snow day” the children in the area are enjoying today, I remember my own childhood in northern Michigan.
We did not live in the Upper Peninsula, but we did live in a very northern part of the Lower Peninsula in Leelanau County. Our home was sandwiched between two lakes, within a short block from the shores of Lake Michigan, the “big lake”, and within less than a mile of Lake Leelanau, a very long inland lake known as the “little lake”.
In this rural area, if the roads were not passable for the children who lived out on the farms, the authorities had to cancel school. When we had a snowstorm, I always hoped that it would result in a snow day. Nothing was better than to have the weekend extended by a snowstorm that closed the schools.
If a storm blew in off the big lake on Sunday, I would watch for enough accumulation to make it necessary to close the schools. I knew just how much snow had to accumulate on our big picture window to call off school. Little by little, the snow would inch up the glass and when it got to six inches, I would go to bed happy in the knowledge that there would be no school the next day. My brothers, sisters, and I got up early the next day with great anticipation of a day off school. We quickly ate breakfast, put on our snow pants, warm jackets, mittens, hats, scarves, and set off to ride our sleds down the hill, make snowmen, build snow forts, and have snowball fights.
There is nothing in the world as sweet as a snow day – a day stolen from the humdrum and provided solely for children to play.