Is There Anything Quite Like a Snow Day?
By: Matt Lardie
Tags: Winter, Snow Day, Snow, Nostalgia, Childhood

Photo by Jasper Garratt on Unsplash

As a kid growing up in New England snow days were akin to Christmas Eve. You went to bed with the anticipation that the next morning would bring something new, something exciting, something rare.

My childhood bedroom was at the front of the house with windows facing the street. On snowy nights I’d creep out of bed, sometimes at two or three in the morning, and press my face against the window to watch the snow fall. The glow of the streetlights would reflect off the white on the ground and turn the entire street into some sort of surreal yellowish snow globe. The silence would be all-enveloping, that special sort of silence that only exists when it snows.

I’d set my alarm early, like early-early. The morning radio programs usually started at five, and they’d begin first thing with the list of closures or delays. My radio alarm clock was the most adult thing I owned and on these mornings, with the promise of a snow day hanging heavy in the air, it was also the most important thing I owned.

I lived in a town called Plainville and so I had to sit for agonizing hours (that were more likely seconds or minutes) as the DJ read through the list alphabetically. “Avon Public Schools, 2 hour-delay. Berlin Public Schools, cancelled. Bloomfield Public Schools, 2-hour delay.”

I learned to pay attention to the towns that were immediately around us, geography nerd that I was. If Bristol and Farmington and New Britain were cancelled, then things were looking up for us in tiny little Plainville, sandwiched between them. (Our other neighbor Southington was, appropriately, south in both location and alphabet and by then I would have already learned my fate and switched off the radio.)

“Plainville Public Schools, cancelled.”

In my little kid brain that was like winning the lottery. A. Whole. Day. Off. Never matter that now, as a grownup, 24 hours passes in the blink of an eye. As a child a snow day meant unlimited possibilities.

We’d spend the day running in and out of the house, pulling on and ripping off snow clothes. We’d have snowball fights where inevitably someone got hit with the icy snowball and started crying. We’d dig intricate, hobbit-like snow forts of the kind they tell kids not to dig these days, with tunnels that felt as though they were 30 feet deep and could collapse on us at any moment. We’d climb over ever-growing snowbanks and wave at the plow drivers as they passed by. Maybe we’d even dare each other to play snow plow-dodge, swearing that we knew of a kid two towns over who died doing it last year.

My dad built a skating rink in our backyard each year, and on some snow days we’d play hockey with neighborhood kids or just skate and push each other into the snow sideboards he’d built up around the perimeter. I wasn’t very good at doing the classic slide-stop on my ice skates so I’d do a little figure-skate spin to slow myself down. It was very queer, though at the time I thought it was a cool and elegant way to stop.

Photo by Mihály Köles on Unsplash

At the end of what seemed like an eternity we’d come inside for dinner, both sweaty and cold at the same time. Sometimes we’d be let out later that night for one last go at the snow; running around the front yard after the sun had set but the world was still lit up in that same yellow glow, not quite daylight but definitely far from dark. Other times we’d watch a movie, drifting off to sleep on the couch, completely exhausted from the day. For my mom, who’d lost a day to herself with the school closure, these post-snow day crashes must have felt like gifts from heaven.

Unless the storm was truly big we’d inevitably be back in school the next day; this was New England, after all. Snow didn’t stop much. Still though, we had that holiday. That escape. That one unstructured day just to go out and be kids.

Even now, in adulthood, I get giddy looking out the window and seeing the big fat flakes drift lazily toward the ground. The promise of what’s to come. The knowledge that when I wake up in the morning the world will have changed.

Snow days are a bit different as an adult, but in a way they can still spark that childhood joy. You still have a bit of an excuse to take some time off, to have some fun. It might mean not changing out of your pajamas while you answer work emails from home and making yourself a cocktail at lunch, or it might mean cozying up in front of the fireplace with a book all morning long. Maybe you take the day and go skiing, or have a Netflix marathon, or just do absolutely nothing except watch the snow fall. It’s the possibility of what could be that makes a snow day so special.

Or maybe you have kids and you’re like my mom, cursing the weather and waiting until they pass out, exhausted from playing in the snow all day.

Either way, is there anything quite like a snow day?