In case it has escaped anyone’s attention, it’s snowing in Delaware. A lot. More than a lot, actually. This is a good old New England Nor’Easter plain and simple. This is the snow of my childhood.
As a child I would have been beside myself with joy. Snowed in for days – check! Building snowmen – check!! Cooking stew on the woodstove as they did in “olden times” – check!!! Making a snow tunnel and fort – check!!!! Full snowsuit, boots, hat, scarf and mittens ensemble – check!!!!!
As a grownup, though, I am looking at all this snow and sighing. Deeply. But only when I look out the front to the driveway and our street which will not be plowed. Surveying the yard in the back garden even I have to admit that the view is just exquisite, with deep drifts piling up against the fence and snow falling silently in the woods beyond.
And it does remind me of my childhood. There were snows, then, deep in the hinterlands of Massachusetts that would keep us buried for days on end. Did we care? Not one fig! Where did we have to go, after all? Nowhere, that’s where, and we loved every minute of it. There would be hot chocolate made with full fat milk and loaded with marshmallows; my Dad and I would have snowball fights and then bring in more wood from the stack so my mother could get something cooking on the stove, because inevitably we would have lost power. We were warm and dry and safe and we played games by lamplight and told stories and yes, it was that idyllic.
By day five I’m sure it wasn’t quite so nice…..the extended scene is almost certainly painted by the brushstrokes of youth. We had a well. No power = no running water = … you get the picture.
Today, I’m not going to remember that part of winter blizzards. Why tarnish the memory and frizzle the reality of what, apparently, is one of those “Storms of the Century?” Nope, I’m going to make some hot chocolate with full fat milk (no marshmallows, alas), read a book, and recapture the excitement of my youth – when Narnia was just a lamp post away.
Amy Hanson 
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