By Rebecca Hall
When I was a kid, a snow day was like summer vacation right in the middle of winter. No school. No homework. And a full day outside with the other kids in the neighborhood. A snow day was an oasis in a week full of 6:30 a.m. wake-up calls and mundane grammar lessons.
If my memory serves me correctly, snow days were a lot more fun back then. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate a day off school…or two or three or four. On Wednesday afternoon the procrastinator in me was determined to put off my homework for one more day.
So I sat glued to my television screen, my laptop opened to the university homepage next to me, and watched the list of school closings posted on the screen. During commercials I obsessively checked my email for “official” news.
Finally, early in the evening, the words I’d been waiting for: University of Louisville – Closed. My younger sister and I (both U of L students) jumped up and hugged, sharing our jubilation. We could now put our text books away and delay the inevitable one more day.
As wonderful as a week off school is, today there are a few more hassles that come with that beautiful blanket of white and the sparkling icicles dangling from tree limbs and power lines. These hassles were previously the concern of my parents as I joined my siblings in snowball fights and makeshift sledding. Now I’m the parent. I’ve now inherited the hassles.
I knew I was in trouble Monday night. As I was turning out the lights in my house in Hikes Point, I suddenly heard some crackling sounds and then a large thump. I ran to the backdoor to see a strong stream of rain falling and a large limb dangling between the tree and my house. I glanced at the power line strung from my house and my eyes moved upward to the large tree and the layer of ice forming along its branches. “I hope a branch doesn’t knock that line down,” I briefly thought to myself. Then I went to bed, thinking of the power line each time a crack and loud thump, a sound like an avalanche, woke me.
Eventually morning came. It was quiet again and I had almost forgotten about the falling branches until I looked outside to see a winter wonderland. The scene was peaceful, almost comforting until I noticed amid the sea of large limbs that could have passed as small trees, my power line resting uselessly on the ground, covered in snow. Only then did I feel the cold in my house and checked, in vain, to see if any of the lights were working.
There I was: the dead of winter, snow continuing to coat the ground, no power, no heat, no hot water, and a 2-year-old sure to wake any minute. I regretted deciding to wait until morning to shower.
After I made some phone calls, first to my dad and then my boyfriend, I shut off the water at their direction and packed some bags, grateful my parents had power and we had a place to go. I decided to pack light – after all I was sure I would be gone a few days at most. When all was said and done, I left the house with four bags. I thought this was a little excessive but as it turned out, my over packing mentality came in handy when a few days started looking like a week or more at my parents.
Once in the car I made it as far as the end of my driveway before my car wheels started grinding snow, and it took a push from my boyfriend’s truck to get me going on my way.
My snow day turned into a week at my parents, out of my house and my routine, my hidden idiosyncrasies exposed for all to see. And my mother got what she’s been longing for ever since I left the nest – me back under her roof. I felt like a teenager again. I had to walk into a private room to talk on the phone, let my parents know where I was going and when I’d be back, and be tortured as my mom and dad monopolized the television and I was forced to sit through hours of Fox News shows.
But it wasn’t all bad. I’ve had meals cooked for me, my parents and siblings helped with my son and more sleep than I’ve gotten in years. Who knows, I may even throw a snowball or make a snow angel before the snow melts away and this all becomes a story I tell my son on his first snow day off from school.
