You might be especially disheartened to learn that they are in fact taking away snow days. If more than one day they go to remote learning, in places like nyc I think they might even be doing remote learning on the very first snow day. In some places maybe 2nd grade and up, in some maybe K. Anyway, beautifully written!
Can confirm that my friend is teaching remotely in nyc on this snow day. I have to wonder what children are losing by not just experiencing the world outside on days like this- is their syllabus really so rigid? Is that a good example, that school/work are so important that you can stop to look around once in a while?
When I was little, my mother (a teacher), used to wake up extra early to find out on the news, if our school district was closed. She'd wake me up, whisper excitedly "Snow day!" Then we'd all have a snow day together. She made snow angels every time :)
And I will never forget that euphoric relief and total wonderful sleepiness that sunk me back down into the pillows for actual more sleep on a school day morning.
It was very different than the rush in my veins at the smell of summer on that first morning in June when I didn't have to wake up for school (And so was up early, ready to play away the day). It IS magical.
In Missouri we have what the people in charge see as a "win/win", though I'm not so sure - an hour or less of worksheets to do, and no make up school day. Teachers get less work, and kids get less school, which they love. For thier education, maybe not so great...
Leaving my dog to die unbeknownst to me, while I have a great, ok day - is one of my greatest fears. I hate you.
Also, it's a great short story.
And yes, this snow is for children. And dogs. But only for a little while. My dog will happily freeze to death, because she's half Bernese mountain dog. Her instinct is to find cold - but she doesn't have the extreme temperature adaptation. So she has a coat and booties that she loathes. Her favorite problem solving game is figuring out how to get them off in the snow.
At least you don't have to shovel a pooping station for children.
The snow being "slightly disappointing for twenty-five years" is the line I'll carry from this. There's something in the idea that the thing itself didn't change — it still snows exactly like that — but your capacity to receive it did. And that it only comes back when you're standing next to someone who hasn't learned to be disappointed yet. That's a whole theory of how wonder works, buried in a paragraph about weather. Thank you for this.
Surely - if it snows like this only for children - I must be a child at heart. I was sledding solo down my hill. Ordered new sleds. Made snow angels. I am 52 years old!!
that's really beautiful, Eric. We never -- or very very rarely -- see snow like that in Ireland, yet that passage from Joyce's The Dead is what immediately comes to mind when I even think of snow. I almost know it off by heart, it's so beautiful and so sad at the same time. Like snow. Like The Snowman. Thank you for writing that (as we sit in endless rain in Ireland.)
I was on a date a while ago and she asked me why I wanted children. I think your last 4 sentences encapsulates the shpiel I gave her pretty succinctly.
What a lovely evocation of the magic of snow and its multiple metaphoric links with childhood. I mourn the loss of such snowfalls as you describe so beautifully here—I've lived long enough to appreciate how much rarer they are now and increasingly restricted to fewer regions of the country. I'm glad there is language to preserve the memory of snow's enchantments for future generations.
You might be especially disheartened to learn that they are in fact taking away snow days. If more than one day they go to remote learning, in places like nyc I think they might even be doing remote learning on the very first snow day. In some places maybe 2nd grade and up, in some maybe K. Anyway, beautifully written!
The snow day is archetypal and mythic, you can't mess with stuff like that.
Agree - for the brain, a feeling of safety and protection to remember when you grow older. Wonder why they get encoded so deeply in memory...
See my response above. I have no idea, but I completely agree. VERY important ritual.
Can confirm that my friend is teaching remotely in nyc on this snow day. I have to wonder what children are losing by not just experiencing the world outside on days like this- is their syllabus really so rigid? Is that a good example, that school/work are so important that you can stop to look around once in a while?
Remote learning on a SNOW DAY?
That is so evil....
I am calling my child out "Sick" if I have one.
When I was little, my mother (a teacher), used to wake up extra early to find out on the news, if our school district was closed. She'd wake me up, whisper excitedly "Snow day!" Then we'd all have a snow day together. She made snow angels every time :)
And I will never forget that euphoric relief and total wonderful sleepiness that sunk me back down into the pillows for actual more sleep on a school day morning.
It was very different than the rush in my veins at the smell of summer on that first morning in June when I didn't have to wake up for school (And so was up early, ready to play away the day). It IS magical.
In Missouri we have what the people in charge see as a "win/win", though I'm not so sure - an hour or less of worksheets to do, and no make up school day. Teachers get less work, and kids get less school, which they love. For thier education, maybe not so great...
You can’t mention The Snowman and not mention Walking in the Air:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=f0CLyDPY_U0&feature=shared
Leaving my dog to die unbeknownst to me, while I have a great, ok day - is one of my greatest fears. I hate you.
Also, it's a great short story.
And yes, this snow is for children. And dogs. But only for a little while. My dog will happily freeze to death, because she's half Bernese mountain dog. Her instinct is to find cold - but she doesn't have the extreme temperature adaptation. So she has a coat and booties that she loathes. Her favorite problem solving game is figuring out how to get them off in the snow.
At least you don't have to shovel a pooping station for children.
I'm glad it makes you happy today :)
Ya, that forgotten death brings back memories of the bunny in The Stand. Still think of that in my dark hours.
You say it only snows like this for children. But I'd argue it doesn't snow for children at all. It snows for attention. Children
just happen to be the ones still spending it freely.
What changes between age eight and thirty-three isn't the snow. It's the metabolic budget we allocate to raw perception. A child
lying on their back kicking out an igloo isn't doing anything special — they're doing the default. They haven't yet learned to run
the expensive cognitive subroutines that adults run constantly: planning, evaluating, narrating, optimizing. Those subroutines cost
glucose. They cost presence. And they are running in the background every waking second of adult life, like forty browser tabs you
forgot you opened.
So the snow didn't get worse. You got busy. And "busy" isn't a calendar problem — it's a neurological one. The prefrontal cortex
that makes you a competent adult is the same machinery that makes snow slightly disappointing. Maturity is, in a very literal
sense, a tax on wonder.
Which is why I'd push back gently on the framing that you're "no longer the protagonist" of the child's story. I think the real
move isn't stepping aside into a supporting role — it's recognizing that the story was never about childhood. It was about a mode
of consciousness that children access by default but adults have to fight for. Joyce wasn't a child when he wrote that passage. He
was a meticulous, obsessive, half-blind adult sitting in Trieste, reconstructing snow he hadn't touched in years. The snow fell for
him because he gave it the only thing it asks for: sustained, undefended attention.
Your daughter isn't seeing better snow. She's seeing the same snow with fewer filters. And the fact that you looked outside and saw
it too — really saw it, white and fluffy and structurally perfect — suggests those filters are more optional than we think. You
didn't borrow her eyes. You just, for a moment, turned off the narrator.
The part about snow as dreamworld resonates, but I wonder if we have the causation backwards. We don't dream because we sleep. We
dream because waking life has gotten too rigid to hold everything we notice. Snow doesn't represent the dreamworld — it creates the
conditions for one. It eliminates visual noise. It muffles sound. It erases the landmarks that keep our spatial reasoning locked
in practical mode. A snowfall is the world doing you the favor of simplifying itself until your perception has no choice but to
soften.
Maybe the reason snow is also death in every story you cite is simpler than symbolism: attention and mortality draw from the same
well. To be fully present in a moment is to admit that moments end. Children don't know this yet, which is why their wonder costs
them nothing. For adults, the price of seeing the snow — really seeing it — is knowing it will melt.
Beautiful piece. But I suspect the snow was always there. You just finally stopped shoveling long enough to look at it.
The snow being "slightly disappointing for twenty-five years" is the line I'll carry from this. There's something in the idea that the thing itself didn't change — it still snows exactly like that — but your capacity to receive it did. And that it only comes back when you're standing next to someone who hasn't learned to be disappointed yet. That's a whole theory of how wonder works, buried in a paragraph about weather. Thank you for this.
Surely - if it snows like this only for children - I must be a child at heart. I was sledding solo down my hill. Ordered new sleds. Made snow angels. I am 52 years old!!
Où sont les neiges d'antan ? Dans les yeux de nos enfants.
There's a beautiful chapter in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar in which snow is a recurring theme... chapter 20 I think.
Great article. Made me think of “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell.
that's really beautiful, Eric. We never -- or very very rarely -- see snow like that in Ireland, yet that passage from Joyce's The Dead is what immediately comes to mind when I even think of snow. I almost know it off by heart, it's so beautiful and so sad at the same time. Like snow. Like The Snowman. Thank you for writing that (as we sit in endless rain in Ireland.)
I felt this. Well written. Thanks.
"The veil between worlds is thin after a snow." Yes. So very true.
I attempted to capture this fragile, holy balance with the following poem:
"A great white whirl descends
and the world grows quiet,
each echo dampened,
each edge softened
beneath this solemn veil.
Here is a holy erasure
for a world grown too dark.."
More: https://www.whitenoise.email/p/soliloquy-on-snowfall
I was on a date a while ago and she asked me why I wanted children. I think your last 4 sentences encapsulates the shpiel I gave her pretty succinctly.
My 2 year old nephew wakes up my brother every morning all excited exclaiming "dad its day outside now!"
Children are the most beautiful gift.
https://substack.com/@apexki/note/c-167797634?r=5vg8mo&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web - A playful twist on the cutaneous rabbit illusion.
What a lovely evocation of the magic of snow and its multiple metaphoric links with childhood. I mourn the loss of such snowfalls as you describe so beautifully here—I've lived long enough to appreciate how much rarer they are now and increasingly restricted to fewer regions of the country. I'm glad there is language to preserve the memory of snow's enchantments for future generations.