More snow to come

Clear and cold for the next couple of days, and then, according to the forecasters, more snow.

I feel sheepish in admitting that my heart leaps a little bit with those words.

What is it about snow lately that sparks a pulse of excitement? Why am I finding myself a state more typical of childhood than middle age, in which the prospect of being snowed in once again thrills me?

I’m not sure. All I know is that after several somewhat curmudgeonly years in which a snowstorm, while pretty, connoted all kinds of inconveniences, it seems I’ve reverted to childhood in my delight at the mere words “snow day.”

When I try to trace the evolution of my relationship to snow through the past few years, it begins to make a little bit of sense. As a young professional in my twenties, I lived in the city and walked to work. Snow meant a cold, messy trudge through slush and over snowbanks to get wherever I needed to be, and against a backdrop of gray buildings and parked cars rather than meadows and forests, snow just didn’t seem so pretty or romantic.

Then I discovered another perspective on snow, as a homeowner in the suburbs. In our first home, snow meant shoveling and snowblowing our driveway, and stress over how to get to the office. This was before the days of telecommunications, and a forecast of snow meant a restless night of worrying about the drive to work – or an anxious day in the office thinking about the homeward commute.

Once we moved out to the country, it wasn’t a matter of shoveling or snowblowing anymore. We lived next door to my parents’ farm, and they had all the snow-clearing equipment anyone would need to keep a driveway usable.

But that wasn’t so ideal either. My father took care of plowing on the farm, our driveway as well as theirs, and hearing him out in the middle of the night plowing made me feel anxious and guilty, even though I knew he wasn’t doing it specifically for my sake. Still, I couldn’t much enjoy a heavy snowfall, knowing it meant he was setting his alarm at regular intervals throughout the pre-dawn hours to get out for another round of plowing.

And from there came my kids’ early childhood days, when a snowday brought them glee but me still further worries. Which parent would be the one to miss work and stay home if the kids didn’t have school? By this time Internet connections and other telecommuting capabilities were a natural part of our lives, but little kids and a work-from-home day aren’t a productive mix. It made me happy to see the kids having fun in the snow, but there was still an element of uneasiness as the unmet deadlines piled up.

But somehow in the past few years, that changed. We moved to a different house, where we pay for a professional plow driver whose truck headlights cutting through the pre-dawn darkness don’t make me feel guilty at all. Of course, in the back of my mind is the awareness that across town my father is still getting up before down to clear their driveway, but at least I don’t feel complicit anymore. And the kids, now in middle school and high school, certainly aren’t any trouble on a snow day: their preference is to sleep until ten, read, maybe play a few rounds of ping-pong.

So I suppose my reborn affinity for snow comes from the fact that we’ve come full circle. My life is now at the point where I can feel like a kid again when I hear that there’s snow in the forecast. With my own kids, I can revel in the unexpected chance to sleep late, and then be home all day and not have to dress for work or drive anywhere. While they read or play ping-pong, I can still get work done and not worry about missing deadlines.

Somehow the coziness is back, the feeling of being unexpectedly but joyfully circumscribed by the house for the day, the extra time created by cancellations. It wasn’t something I expected to find again; I had come to assume in adulthood that only kids could really relish snow days.

But I was wrong. And if I have yet another chance this winter – this very week – to remember that, all the better.

A new culinary tradition for snow days

We’ve long had a tradition that when the kids have a snow day, I make bacon for them. It’s a cozy and pleasing habit: they love the taste and I like the way it makes the house smell for the rest of the day. I’m a fan of food-related traditions in general, so I’ve always found it satisfying to have one special food dedicated to snow days. And true, bacon is not good for them from a nutritional standpoint – “salted fat,” as a friend of mine referred to it recently – but surely for a special treat it’s okay. After all, if they have it only on snow days, how often are they really going to get to indulge?

Well, once or twice a week this winter, it turns out. And yesterday morning, as we embarked upon our fifth snow day in three weeks, I told them we’d have to skip the obligatory bacon. “It’s just getting to be too much,” I told them. “Thirty years from now, your doctors will ask you how you developed such a bad cholesterol problem and you’ll have to say, ‘Remember how much snow we had in the winter of 2011?’”

The kids took it pretty well. Either they’ve grown mature enough to accept the occasional disappointment, or they’ve grown old enough to appreciate a nutritional hazard when they see one, or else we’ve actually had so many snow days that they’ve reached the previously unimaginable point of being tired of bacon.

But we needed some kind of gustatory observance of the day, some ritual to mark the special ambience of a snow day even if snow days feel more like the rule than the exception this winter. “How about chocolate mousse?” Tim suggested.

That gave me an even better idea. “I’ll make something for you that I used to love when I was your age,” I told them, and pulled out my mom’s recipe for Pots de Crème. I instructed Holly to fetch from the china hutch the tiny covered porcelain pots that are specifically dedicated to this particular dessert. They are the same dishes we used for Pots de Crème when I was growing up, and because back then it was my favorite dessert, my mother gave me the set of dishes once I was an adult. Holly uses them occasionally for tea parties, but I couldn’t remember ever making Pots de Crème in them for my kids.

It’s an easy recipe, and as I whirred the chocolate in the blender and heated milk to a simmer, I reflected on how much delight I had gotten from this dish when I was little. Ineffably rich and concentrated in its dark chocolate taste, it’s one of the few desserts that works perfectly as single servings in these miniature white and purple-sprigged dishes; it’s so rich that no one asks for seconds. And there’s just something so special about a dessert served in its own dish, topped with a little lid as if what’s inside is a secret until you’re ready to taste it.

Like everything my mother made when I was growing up, I assumed this recipe was standard special-occasion fare in every household – until, when I was in second grade, my class put together a cookbook with each child’s favorite recipe. Within days after we all brought our photocopied (actually mimeographed) cookbooks home, other parents were stopping me on the school plaza to tell me how much they liked my contribution. It was the first time I’d discovered the social currency of a really great recipe.

We ate our Pots de Crème after dinner last night. When I was growing up, my mother even had tiny spoons to serve with it; I don’t, so we used regular teaspoons and savored every bite. My guess is we’ll make this specialty again on future snow days. It doesn’t fill the house with an aroma the way bacon does, but it definitely makes the day feel like a special occasion.

Snow day!

It’s a snowy day. It’s a Snow Day! Forecasters have been predicting a big storm for the past several days; by late yesterday afternoon their claims were dire enough that the townwide notification system went into effect regarding a school cancellation.

My kids knew when they sat down to dinner last night that there’d be no school today, which to me somewhat changes the flavor of a snow day, as my predominant memory of these same events when I was their age was sitting with bated breath by the radio at 7 a.m. waiting to hear if our town would be named. And my parents always reminded us we had to do our homework the night before, even with a forecast like this one, just in case. Townwide electronic notification wasn’t an option then. So knowing at 6 p.m. the night before takes away some of the key elements of a snow day, in my opinion.

On the other hand, Tim went off to a sleepover at a friend’s house, which he couldn’t have done had we not been certain about the school cancellation; and Holly and I stayed up past her bedtime watching a movie.

When the kids were really little, being snowed in was nothing I looked forward to. I felt plenty resourceful as far as finding things to do with the kids at any time of year and in any weather, but really little kids don’t have much fun outside when it’s snowing hard. And then for the few years that I was working full-time in an office setting, snow days were something to be dreaded: I’d still be expected to put in a full day in the office, childcare arrangements be damned. Staying home with the kids meant pulling the “mom card” and admitting that parenting responsibilities beyond your control were keeping you from work, something to be avoided at all costs in the corporate sector.

But these days, it’s fun – as much fun as I remember snow days being when I was a kid. Holly is lucky enough to have a close friend next door who’s always willing to slog through the yard to our house and play with Holly on a snow day. Tim has the job of shoveling my parents’ front walk, which he usually does with relatively good cheer. We play games. We watch movies. We hang out. We try our hand at making bagels (which never really works out very well, but once a year or so we roll up our sleeves and give it a try anyway) and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (absolutely foolproof). If I have work on deadline, I know the kids are self-reliant enough that I can fit it in. And although they’re still not fond of going outside when it’s snowing heavily, once the precipitation tapers off, I know I’ll be able to get them out for a trip or two down the hill on their sleds. Maybe I’ll even go snowshoeing this afternoon.

One of the picture books I remember best from my childhood was The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I had it in conventional hardcover form; Holly had the board book version when she was a preschooler. I’ve always loved that book, about a boy named Peter who plays all day in the snow. My favorite part comes at the end, when Peter wakes up the next day and is delighted to see that still more snow has fallen.

I’m not necessarily hoping for another snow day – or another foot of snow – tomorrow, but I like the genuine childlike elation behind the way the book ends. Snow and more snow – perfect! It’s exactly how I felt at that age. Then that feeling ended with parental and professional responsibilities. But now it’s back. Snowstorm? I’m ready. It’s January, and that’s what winter is for.