Snow Day

"Is the school closed, mommy? Did we get lots of snow?" My daughter bounded down the stairs this morning, still in her pyjamas, optimism and hope oozing from every pore. Winter in southern Ontario has been MIA this year. Environment Canada had issued a winter storm warning for overnight, and teachers, children and the school custodian were all praying for a snow day. The snow came, but not in sufficient quantity to merit closing the school. School was business as usual.

I grew up in Montreal, and snow days were a part of life in a city where 3 feet of snow could fall over night. I can still remember sitting at the kitchen table to listen for school closures when I was a kid. "Baldwin-Cartier school board" was all I had to hear and I was set for the day. School was closed-time to play outside with my friends.

I remember one winter, either 1972 or 1973, that had so many snow storms that the snowbanks were almost to the roof-line. We were snowed in for 3 days because they couldn't get the plows out. Snow was up to my waist (now granted I was 9-10 but anyway) and people were skiing to get provisions. Now THAT was a snow event. I was surprised when I moved to Kitchener and they closed the schools for a couple of inches of snow. We could still walk, what was the problem?

 In  Montreal, there were machines that came around to cut back the snowbanks so people could see. We had a little sapling in the front yard, and my mother was a gardener. The force of the snow broke a branch, and I remember her standing in the snowbank with electrical tape, reinforcing the branch before allowing my dad to take her to the hospital with her asthma.

Our school had winter carnival every year, and there was a snow sculpture contest by classroom. Our class beat the whole school one year when we did Snoopy on his dog house, complete with Woodstock. Kids here don't usually have enough snow to do that.

My kid went to school today under protest. She will come home with sopping wet snowpants, mitts and tales of sliding down the hill at recess. It's all good.

Building a snowman

Sometimes the universe throws you a bone. I've been preoccupied and stressed lately, trying to build a marketing strategy for myself, while dealing with my husband's continued grief over losing his mother and the new challenges we are facing with our daughter. My throat goes into spasm when I'm really stressed, and I've been trying to ignore it, although it's painful and makes eating a challenge.

Mother Nature is playing a game of "now you see it, now you don't" with Southern Ontario. The last couple of days have been positively balmy, with temperatures well above 0 Celsius. When I picked my daughter up from school on Wednesday, she grabbed a mittful of snow and asked:

"Mommy, is this good snowman snow?"

My daughter had not yet learned to build a snowman. Oh sure, she'd stacked piles of snow up and made a reasonable facsimile, but she hadn't yet learned how to roll the snow from tiny to big snowball, how to stack it properly, and lift the head without knocking off the middle piece. The sun was shining. We had swimming lessons but not for a couple of hours. I made a split second decision and told her to go in the backyard, I was going to throw the stuff in the house and I'd meet her there. She looked at me suspiciously for a second to see if I was kidding, and then sprinted for the backyard.

I didn't even bother to change into mitts, so I made a snowman in my good leather gloves. I showed her how to roll the snow, and then she went off to try her own hand at it while I finished my first snowman in about 40 years. I'm a bit out of practice, but my daughter was delighted with the finished result.

mom's snowman

Kid's first snowman

We stayed out until my daughter's snowpants were soaked through, my leather gloves were soaked through and our cheeks were rosy and our noses running. For the first time in a week, the spasm in my throat released.  After a while, I stood on the deck and watched while my daughter carved a den out of the side of the big pile of snow. She was focused and attentive to detail, and made a great job of it.

When she was satisfied with the results, we headed inside to have cookies and hot chocolate before heading out to swimming lessons.

Sometimes, you just have to forget about everything for a time and help your kid build a snowman.