Joyous Christmas to You

It’s a white Christmas in Cincinitucky. Or at least there’s snow on the ground in my neighborhood. White Christmas is a fairly rare occurrence in Cincinnati.

Last night it looked like it was frosting the neighborhood with thick white icing.  The icing snow didn’t stick – too much blowing last night. But there is still snow on the ground. There will be another morning with icing snow to look forward to. It’s the only snow I like. The snow that makes it all look like a postcard.

If the universe was properly organized snow would ALWAYS ice everything like cake. But no. Conditions have to be perfect. And they rarely are.

I thought it was nice though that the Texas snow was an icing snow. It felt so much more like a gift, rather than a problem.

I was born in Puerto Rico and didn’t see snow until we moved to the States when I was 12. My parents insisted that I was much better off having not seen snow, having grown up in Wisconsin and Indiana respectively. But a child always wants what it can’t have. And I thought I was deprived.

Anyway, when I was 12, my father got transferred to Illinois and we moved to the US 2 days after the blizzard of 77. It was cold and there was snow. I was excited to see it.

We arrived into O’hare and all the snow was black. It was horrid. It was dark and cold and the snow was black. And then I got a stomach flu on the drive to Bloomington. So my father pulled over 3 times for me to throw up into dirty snow banks.

I did not enjoy that winter.

The following winter we moved to Connecticut. That was where I saw the snow that I had always dreamed of for the first time. The snow that you see in postcards. It was heavy white wet snow that iced everything in perfect white downiness.

My mother explained to me how snow was different depending on the current temp, the previous temp and wind. I became a connoisseur of snow for a while. Fascinated by it’s varying textures and what produced them. The pinnacle for me will always be the icing. But a hoar frost is a lovely fragile second, even if it’s not technically snow.

College took away all the fascination. There is something about having to trudge a mile to class in the cold, on icy/snowy sidewalks that removes the allure.