SNOW DAY!

One of my favorite things about living in the Midwest is being able to experience the fullness of the four seasons: luminous indelible autumnal colors, winter's snows, shoots of green in spring, and the sprinkler days of summer. Since we're in the full blast of winter, I'm embracing all that comes with our coldest season: time by the fire, hot chocolates, walks in the snow, mornings sledding on a hill in the park by our house, reading lots and lots good books 'neath old quilts, getting an automated call from the school district at 5:30 a.m. with an announcement that we're having a SNOW DAY!!!!!!

This year, we had our first Snow Day on February 1st. The kids stayed in their PJs 'til noon, we took a friend sledding, and made Snow Ice Cream.
love

SNOW ICE CREAM

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon salt

Beat together until creamy.

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup milk (we use 1/2 and 1/2)
1 tablespoon vanilla

Add this to egg mixture and beat together.

Pour above combination mixture over 12 cups of fresh clean snow. Fold together and eat quickly! (If you're concerned about raw eggs; you can make the same recipe omitting the eggs.)

I think what I love the most about experiencing the seasons is that they're full with metaphor and symbol for the cycles of our lives. They speak so strongly, graphically, sensually of death, rebirth, love and loss, grace, and beauty that comes after pain. Shel Silverstein says it wondrously in his poem about a snowman who doesn't want to melt:

Chirped a robin, just arriving,

"Seasons come and seasons go,

And the greatest ice must crumble

When it's flowers' time to grow.

And as one thing is beginning

So another thing must die . . .

It isn't a coincidence that flowers come after the white frigid deep-freeze . . . that my second son was born the week my paternal grandmother died . . . that healing came in my family while I was suffering inexorable, incapacitating back pain . . . that "unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies . . . "

How do you feel about the seasons? Do you have a story to share about the way seasons have symbolized the life and death cycles in your own experience? Feel free to share a story, poem, song, or idea as a comment!

love

Perhaps Silverstein's entire poem and the glorious illustration by my second-grade son, Ben, will inspire you.

SNOWMAN

love

love love 'Twas the first day of the springtime,

And the snowman stood alone

As the winter snows were melting,

And the pine trees seemed to groan,

"Ah, you poor sad smiling snowman,

You'll be melting by and by."Said the snowman, "What a pity,

For I'd like to see July.

Yes, I'd like to see July, and please don't ask me why.
But I'd like to, yes I'd like to, oh I'd like to see July."

Chirped a robin, just arriving,
"Seasons come and seasons go,
And the greatest ice must crumble
When it's flowers' time to grow.
And as one thing is beginning
So another thing must die,

And there's never been a snowman

Who has ever seen July.

No, they never see July, no matter how they try.

No, they never ever, never ever, never see July."

But the snowman sniffed his carrot nose

And said, "At least I'll try,

And he bravely smiled his frosty smile

And blinked his cola-black eye.

And there he stood and faced the sun

A blazin' from the sky -

And I really cannot tell you

If he ever saw July.

Did he ever see July? You can guess as well as I

If he ever, if he never, if he ever saw July.