Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 17, 1992 TAG: 9202170202
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
AN 8-YEAR-OLD'S AMAZEMENT
EVERY DAY, I'm waiting for snow. The sunlight can be clear and brittle, as clean as windows after their spring cleaning, and still I'm waiting for snow. Holding my arms, walking with my heels close to the ground, as if with my posture alone I could draw the barometric pressure down and make a space that heavy snow fronts would fill.Remember how it snowed in our youth?
Mountains of snow every winter. Fields and fields of snow, as far as the eye could see.
We built forts in the front yard and snowmen that wore old hats. We sailed down the hill behind the barn on two-runner sleds and the tops of metal trash cans. We skated all afternoon on one or another of Mr. Peck's frozen ponds.
In a waiting room this fall, I heard one man tell another, "Fifty, 60 years ago around here, there's snow on the ground come October and it won't gone till May."
Was that just exaggeration? I don't think so. I remember snow like that, too, and not from so long ago.
Oh, you don't have to remind me to consider, as well, the tire chains, the windshield scrapers, the way highway salts will rust your car's undercarriage.
I haven't forgotten shoveling snow so the back door will open. Or hauling bags of groceries the length of a snow-bound driveway. Or wondering if the highways will be cleared by the time I can finally drive home.
But isn't there something of youthful adventure in all that, too? Having the every-day apple-cart upset, wondering if schools will be closed, holidays declared, families snugged into their living rooms with popcorn and mugs of cocoa?
All right. So it's never really like that.
Oh, maybe just for the first hour or so, when you can't seem to keep from standing at the window, gazing out, awestruck all over again by the beauty.
And that's what I'm waiting for. That feeling of high adventure. That expectation that this time maybe we really will snug down comfortably with cocoa and forget to worry about freezing pipes or slick hills or a lack of adequate winter boots.
That maybe this time the beauty will seem as innocent and unbroken as the snow we awoke to - amazed! - when we were still 8 years old and couldn't quite imagine how the night had filled our yards and trees so magically.
Remember that time when we were still willing to throw ourselves into the gift of a day that billowed around us? That's what I'm waiting for.
Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.