Southern Boy in a Snow Storm

The first time in my adult life I found myself in a snow storm, I got frostbite and propositioned by my would-be rescuer. The second time, I was in my car driving cross-country with my dog in the back seat and the storm following me like an irritating tune. That it sometimes overtook me - and never when I wanted it to - balanced with the fact that my dog sat in the backseat and occasionally stuck his head into the front seat for a scratch or to lick my cheek.

So perhaps it is no wonder today I found myself ambivalent at best about the snow falling outside the window. It seems I may well be congenitally unable to prepare properly for snow. I got frostbite because I was walking without a hat or gloves though I knew a storm was coming. On the drive, I was certain my new tires would be more than enough to see me through a drive that should have taken 24 hours but instead kept me in the car for 56. Today's snow doesn't look so bad, I think, though I fought the urge (as all of us from the South must when snow is predicted) to run to the store and load a cart full of everything we've ever wanted to eat but couldn't, just in case we're somehow snowed in. Who would want to risk dying, after all, without at least two boxes of those orange flavored Hostess cupcakes one can normally only find at truck stops?

Coming home today, the snow Photoshopped the town at the bottom of the hill out of existence, urging me to paint in a new background of my choosing for the drive home. My preferred image for the new horizon of the many I considered was of my dog in mid-leap for his frisbee, soon to land where the grocery store and the bowling alley had once been. Who wouldn't love "Giant Dog Horizon and Snow Storm"? And it occurred to me, as you drive closer to the Equator, the brighter things become, and I began to fear that life this far north was going to slowly weaken my rods and cones so that one day, when I'm further south, the bright colors of everything from flowers to houses will hurt my eyes.

Oh, that just one Northern house would gleefully cast off Scandinavian manners and offer some little bit of turquoise offense.

And still, last night, drifting in and out of sleep, I thought how glorious it was to hover in bed, the face of my pup peeking over the edge, a story near, a sleepy voice and laughter. How sweet this elegy; how pleasant the snow could be.