First Snow Day
Looking out the window thinking that it was the most wonderful sight I’ve ever saw. It was the day that the entire city of Detroit, MI was covered in so much snow; everything had come to a halt. Low pressure had come in 24 hours before, and less than twenty-four hours and twelve feet of snow later, the entire city was drenched in the snow’s icy hands. There wasn’t anything that you could do because everyone was at the mercy of the snow and I loved it. I wanted to run in my daughters’ room to wake her so that she could see the white blanket that covered everything outside.
Just the sight of twelve feet of snow was too much for me to handle, and many abandoned buildings collapsed as a result of it. As I peered out the window of our upstairs apartment building, the bright light reflecting from the snow nearly blinded me. When my vision cleared, and I was able to see, I was in awe at the sight that I was seeing. It seemed like someone had taken a big bag of sparkling sugar and poured it upon the earth. The normal things that would usually have met my eyes in the morning were mere blobs in the snow, indistinguishable among the white blanket that covered the city.
As I went downstairs to open the door to have a look further outside, my path outside was blocked by a wall of snow; unmoving and solid. A slight chill crept over my body as the cold air poured into the warm building and I ran back inside of my warm and toasty apartment. I watched as the snow plows moved snow from the streets as people moved it from the sidewalks. Once that was done I watched as trucks and people put down salt to help melt the snow. With me being from the south, I never knew that salt would and could melt snow, and really hoped that it would not melt all of the snow before I got my daughter and my clothes on and went out in it.
Once we were dressed, we went out into the snow and like I’ve seen many times before on TV, we made snow angles. Daijha was only 1 going on two, but she was a natural in the snow. I let her see me make a snow angle and that was all she needed to see was her mom playing in the snow like a big kid, because all she could do was laugh and play in the snow with me. Her dad, my boyfriend, Vincent at that time joined us out in the snow and we had a snowball fight. It seemed like we were the only ones around or brave enough to go out in that weather. Vincent never laughed so hard at me for playing in the snow knowing that this was the first time that I had actually been in this much snow.
After our hands got numb, we went inside of our apartment to have hot chocolate with a lot of marshmallows while watching the snow fall from our window. We talked about how much snow falls and how the city shuts down until the snow trucks clear the roads. We also talked about driving in the snow and how I could slide into another car, person, or even a building. Although I loved playing in the snow, the notion of me hitting someone or something quickly turned me loving the snow to wishing it would go away. After our talk about the snow and watching the news, I drifted off to sleep thinking that it would be great not to go outside until spring.
My first snow day brought a lot new and some unwanted experiences for me. Playing in the snow with my family and wishing my sisters and brothers were there to join me in a snowball fight, was a fun and new experience for me. Learning about the dangers of the snow and how you could have an accident or even lose your life, was a new and unwanted experience for me because I had watched on the news how people shoveled snow on the sidewalks and just collapsed and died. Needless to say, my first snow day experience brought new and mixed emotions to me all at once. Eventually, I learned to deal with the good and the bad that snow brought to everyone.