SNOW MORE

     When I was 12, going on 13, I ended my nightly prayers with a request for snow on my birthday. I am a close-to Christmas baby and I planned to carol around the neighborhood with friends to celebrate becoming a teenager. I also secretly planned to get myself a boyfriend.  I had a big crush on Stewart and I was pretty sure he would offer to hold my hand if we were walking in swirls of snow beneath glowing streetlamps to the sound of happy carolers.
     I got my wish. There were swirls of snow beneath glowing streetlamps, and carolers singing, but Stewart held hands with my older sister.
     Snow just can't be trusted.
     I don't pray for snow anymore.  I know it is poor man's fertilizer, bringing nitrogen from the air down into the soil.  I know it refills our aquifers so that the spring behind my house will continue to provide clear water.  I know that to every thing there is a season and snow deserves its season.  I even know that we don't have as much snow as we did 40 years ago and that should be cause for alarm.  My husband still talks about snows that fell in November and melted in April.
     I am not alarmed.  I am relieved.  When your driveway is over a quarter mile long and the last part is a steep hill, snow means that getting to the road is an adventure.  For the first time since we've lived at the foot of this steep hill, I have a four wheel drive vehicle.  I can get out when it snows, but not if the snow has drifted into swales and swells that are two or three feet deep.
     So, I like snow as long as it is only two or three inches deep.  I like watching it fall, twirling to the ground in soft curtains of white, as long as it ends in a couple of hours.  I like my driveway, when it looks like this.

     How about you?  Do you still feel romantic when the snow starts swirling, or do you growl?

The weatherman is calling for 6-8 inches of snow tonight.  It might swirl romantically in the glow of the porch light outside my house, but I won't be watching.  I'll be curled up inside on the sofa with my true love.  It turns out it doesn't take snow to make romance after all.