We had our first big winter snow of 2017 today. Big for us anyway.
Tennessee, or at least the part of Tennessee that we live in, doesn’t get a whole lot of snow. So when we do, I always want to remember it. To capture the flakes on my tongue and the memories of them with my camera. To try make the white powder that’s covering the deck and barns last... even though it never does.
Indy stayed home from school today and so we had a nice morning making a big breakfast together and watching Signing Time. Our middle daughter Hopie joined us and by 10:30 we were outside looking for a sled to take the baby for a ride. We never found a sled, but we did find an old plastic swimming pool that worked just was well.
By late afternoon the snow had stopped falling. Indiana was napping and I was cleaning, or at least I was supposed to be. Instead, I let myself get carried away... looking at the pics and video we took and the fun we had in the snow earlier in the day...
As much as I like the snow, I don’t care much for being cold. I’d rather be hot any day... (unless you ask me in the smoldering heat of late July or August and I’ll probably tell you different). I remember playing in the snow with my brothers and sisters as a little boy in Kansas. With thin jackets and hole’y tube socks on our hands for gloves and being so cold, I never thought I’d get warm again. And I remember Mom and us kids living in rental houses where blankets divided rooms instead of doors. Places that had no heat to keep warm, or at least not much to speak of, and what heat the house had poured out the cracks in the thin walls with no insulation. And I remember walking through fields of snow as a teenager, pheasant hunting with my Dad. He didn’t mind the frigid weather, but I was miserable. My toes and fingers so frozen that I couldn’t have pulled found, let alone pulled the trigger if if ring-neck flew up right in front of me.
But things are different now. Thank God. I’ve got a closet full of warm clothes and a drawer filled with gloves of all sizes (though we all forgot to take gloves w us playing in the snow today)...and our farmhouse is always warm.
And so, Hopie and I – with the baby in tow – did our best to enjoy winter time in Tennessee today. To make some memories that’ll last long after this pretty snow is gone…
