My favorite thing about a snow day is the quiet. When we went to bed last night, the world was still, but there wasn’t any snow. I woke up in the very early morning and knew by the quiet that the snow had arrived - there were no train whistles, no cars on the street, no scrape of shovels on the sidewalk. Even the creaky heating pipes in our building are quiet. A snow day first arrives in utter silence.
For me, snow is the only weather that is a touchstone of memory. Rain is regular enough not to be memorable; sunshine or clouds are just the fabric of each day. But a heavy snow contains within it all the other heavy snows. Building snow forts with the other kids on Mary Street. Sledding down my driveway in junior high school. Walking uptown from the 96th Street subway station when the snow was so thick and fierce that I had to walk in the middle of the carless street to make my way home.
Like many people, I’m lamenting the death of the snow day. With the exception of a few years working for a nonprofit, I’ve worked in schools since I was 18, which means that the snow days of my youth became the snow days of my adulthood. When school was closed I made waffles for some friends who were also teachers and had the day off. When campus closed I could spend the day reading, napping, luxuriating in a day without email. But now: the roads are closed, the sky is white with snow, and I’m working. Kids are in virtual classrooms. Teachers are logging on.
I already miss a world where snow forces us to slow down, to pause, to play. On the phone with my mother yesterday, I reminded her of how we used to listen to the radio for our school district’s call number to hear if we had a snow day or a two hour delay. The announcer would talk at a crisp warp speed, fitting in all of the call numbers for Philadelphia and its suburbs. There were some days that the college where my mother worked was closed, but our local school district was open. The number was 876, those quick syllables embedded in my mind. “We’re old!” my mother cried, observing us remembering radio announcements. There’s getting old, but then there’s the rapid change of the past year, the pandemic altering what we used to be. We’re not going back to the before times. That’s the truth that sometimes knocks the wind out of me. Before will no longer be the future. It’ll be something permanently altered. On the phone with a friend last week I heard myself say, “It’ll take an entire generation to process the trauma of right now.” I didn’t meant to say it, I didn’t mean for the words to crystalize as truth in front of me, but it’s undeniable.
I’m watching the snow drifts blow and swirl from a window in an apartment that I didn’t know existed last year. The snow is an easy touchstone of what the before was like. Later today I’ll bundle myself in my snow boots and my scarf and my gloves and I’ll go and stand in the carless street and remember.
Stay warm and stay safe.
xo,
c
p.s.
I’m claiming this novel as one of my favorite books of the year: Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. It’s the smart queer trans motherhood heartbreaker novel of your dreams.
Happy one year anniversary to Harriet’s Bookshop in Philadelphia!
“I Have A Big Pile Of Writing. Now What?” I highly recommend this writing advice from Yanyi’s newsletter The Reading on the importance of being a reader of your own work.
Has anything changed about the “unbearable whiteness of publishing” in the last twenty five years? This essay in Publishers Weekly has some important insight on what is still broken and what to do next.
Giant snake opening a door = me laughing every time.