Anatomy of a Snow Day

There was little better as a kid during winter than waking up on a snowy day and learning school would be cancelled. Of course, during my school years, that meant rising at the regular early hour and turning the T.V. to the local station to stare at the list of delays and cancellations scrolling up the screen, hoping to see my school there.

If it was, the day unfolded happily in my mind. Extra time in PJs. Reading by the fire. Sledding with friends. Wet mittens, hot cocoa, rosy cheeks.

My kids feel the same sort of snow day joy, although they don’t have to stare at the television to find out if school is off. Now, we receive the message in multiple ways – by text, email, phone call. And a snow day often means a powder day at the mountain, which makes all of us happy.

Here’s what a snow day looks like from this snow-loving mom’s perspective.

4:45 a.m.: Wake up and turn phone on to see if school has been delayed. No text. Lie in the dark, partly trying to go back to sleep, but mostly wondering when the text will come in.

5:16 a.m.: Phone buzzes with two-hour school delay message from superintendent, followed one minute later by house phone ringing with two-hour delay message, then cell phone call with same message.

5:18 a.m.: Check WMUR website to see what other schools are delayed. Notice some have already called a full snow day. Wonder about the likelihood of that happening here.

5:30 a.m.: Give up trying to sleep. Get up, turn coffee maker on, head to office and attempt to meet the day’s deadlines before the kids wake up. Continue to be distracted by the chance that school will be canceled.

6:47 a.m.: Check online snow report for the mountain to see if it’s worth calling a family snow day, despite what school is – or is not – doing. Report not updated. Resume attempts to work.

6:55 a.m.: Check snow report again. No dice. Repeat above attempt to work.

6:56 a.m.: Receive email from school regarding breakfast for students. Assume this is a sign that school will not be cancelled. Feel a little sad.

6:59 a.m.: Bedroom door squeaks as first kid emerges and creeps up to the office to confirm school is delayed. Check snow report again. No dice. Back to work.

7:02 a.m.: Repeat above step with second kid to wake up. Both go downstairs to enjoy the no-rush morning.

7:08 a.m.: Look up from keyboard and notice it’s finally light enough to see outside. It’s dumping. Heart is happy. Seriously dumping. Check snow report again. Still not updated. What the heck?!?

7:13 a.m.: Phone buzzes with text that school is cancelled (and house phone rings, and cell phone rings). Hooray! Feel kind of like a kid. Also, happy that now I don’t have to make the call about a family powder day.

7:14 a.m.: Kid number three emerges from her room and finds me. We celebrate the snow day with a happy hug. Check snow report. Still nothing. Doesn’t matter, I bet we’ll ski.

7:35 a.m.: Give up trying to work – for now. Time to make breakfast, and a plan.

8:45 a.m.: Breakfast done. Dishes done. Ski boots on. Skis in car. Kids in car. Head to the mountain.

9:02 a.m.: Pull into ski area, a few minutes late for first chair.

9:14 a.m.: Slide off chair at the top. Goggles down, hood up. Push down the hill, slide through powder, yee-haw as snow poofs up with each turn, watch the kids weave down the trail, laughing all the way. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 11, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Snow Day (Sort Of)

Tuesday morning I awoke to the aggravating sound of sleet pelting the bedroom windows. I much prefer the soft whisper of snowflakes to the sideways assault of frozen water, for a whole host of reasons. One is that whispers are easier to sleep through.

What a snow day should look like...

Regardless, the kids were happy to have a day off from school, even if it was more of a “sleet day” than a “snow day.”

Snow days (or sleet-and-freezing-rain days) are the only chance my brood gets to sleep in during the winter. Otherwise, we are up early for school, and just as early – sometimes earlier – for weekend skiing. It was nice Tuesday not to have to drag the kids out of bed in the dark of a winter morning.

Instead, they emerged on their own time, all tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed – and confused about why they were allowed to sleep late (which, in our house, means 7 o’clock). “No school? A snow day?” asked my son when he heard the news. “Yes!”

It’s been a while since we’ve had a snow day. When the kids were younger, we used to build little kickers in the back yard on the rare weather-induced day off. The kids would fly off the jumps on sleds or skis and come back inside with rosy cheeks and wet mittens.

Or we’d make snow creatures in the front yard. Some winters we’ve had such a huge pile of snow at the edge of the driveway, the kids could build snow forts complete with sitting areas and tunnels and exit slides.

We haven’t had a snowbank worthy of a fort for a couple of winters now. In December the snow-building opportunities seemed to be looking up. The plow had made decent piles in the fort area. Elsewhere in the yard, the kids had shaped and piled blocks of snow to make the start of an igloo. There was even a small snowman – until the puppy ate it.

Alas, all that white stuff has long since melted. Tuesday’s warm temps and so-called “mixed precipitation” resulted mainly in our driveway-turned-skating-rink melting out – again – into large puddles of slush. There was not enough snow to make even one snowball, let alone an elaborate structure.

Instead, we went for a long walk in the woods, discovering ice-fringed hemlock and beech branches before the temperature warmed to a melting degree. In the shelter of the trees, the mixed precip had left enough white to make a satisfying crunch underfoot, although we had to step carefully through the not-quite-frozen marshy area along our route.

Despite the sad, snowless state of the yard, the sleet day timing was perfect. The day before, two of these children had pulled in quite the haul of birthday presents, which they now had time to properly explore. One kid was recovering from a cold, and we both appreciated the bonus relaxation time to push her back toward healthy.

The day also left us with time for catch-up chores. In the process of cleaning up, lost mittens were found buried under the birthday goodies, new clothes given as Christmas presents were unearthed in the corner of a bedroom, and long-forgotten toys were happily rediscovered.

There were also a few rounds of board games played, some quiet coloring time, bouts of spontaneous snuggling, and – of course – the arguments that come from too much together time.

By the end of the day, the puppy and I were both exhausted, even if the kids seemed rejuvenated by this bonus day off. I thought of my friend in Tahoe, where they’ve received something like 300 inches (that’s 25 feet!) of snow this month. Her kids have had 10 snow days in the last few weeks. That means they’ve been out of school almost twice as many days as they’ve been in.

While the occasional snow day is a nice pause in routine, I’m not sure I’d take 10 of them in a month. But I sure would like some of that snow.
 
Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 27, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Powder Day Progression

Monday’s mini snow storm serendipitously coincided with a day off from both school and my family’s various ski programs. We woke to a few inches of perfect fluff covering the trees and car and driveway, with snow still sifting steadily to the ground.

A few inches constitutes a powder day in my kids’ minds, so after breakfast we made our way along snow-greased roads to the mountain. I spent the next few hours chasing my kids around the familiar ski trails of my own childhood, and I couldn’t help pondering the progression of my skiing life – from New Hampshire to the mellow hills of college days in upstate New York, then the deep snow and steep skiing of Colorado, and finally home again to continue the cycle with the next generation.

In Colorado, I worked in a ski shop a few steps from the base of the main chairlift. My bosses were skiers, and they scheduled shifts so that all employees had a ski break every day. It was during my five years in Crested Butte that I learned the “No friends on a powder day” rule. You could make plans, but if someone didn’t show, there was no waiting around; it’s every skier for herself when the getting is good.

A powder day there, whether interrupted by work or not, generally included laps on the Headwall or North Face, searching out new lines and fresh tracks each run, and recounting the day’s best turns over a couple of beers with friends. I remember skiing one perfect, snowy day without stopping to eat, run after joyful run of deep snow and sweet turns, skiing until my legs were jelly. At day’s end I was exhausted, but happy, fulfilled.

In my first winters back East the occasional storm brought a gift of knee-deep powder and soft bumps, a respite from the harder, groomed, manmade stuff. If I could sneak away from work, I would spend an hour or two skiing off the Zoomer chair, short, steep runs as familiar as my own back yard. Sometimes I’d run into friends in the lift line, and we’d ski together for a while. But the no-friends-on-a-powder-day rule stuck: there was no waiting, no adjusting to others’ work schedules. And whether it was a stolen hour or a full afternoon of skiing, I left the mountain with that same feeling of happy fulfillment.

Fast forward a few years, and I found myself with three young children, who I was determined would be skiers. Raising skiers is not for the faint of heart. It starts with years of bundling awkward toddlers and preschoolers into layers of sometimes uncomfortable clothing, coaxing small feet into rigid ski boots, schlepping skis from the car, and getting everyone’s boots into bindings, goggles and neck-warmers properly adjusted, mittens tucked into sleeve cuffs just right.

Pockets filled with chocolate and the promise of cocoa breaks provided extra incentive if needed. But there were meltdowns, of course, sometimes from tired little skiers; sometimes from the skier mom longing for the bigger runs beyond the pony slope.

Back then, I managed to sneak out once or twice a winter to ski with friends on longer, steeper, snowier terrain. On those rare occasions, the old no-friends rule went out the window. I welcomed the kid-free companionship of friends on the chairlift, and we weren’t above taking our own cocoa breaks if the wind was too cold or the lift line too long – or we simply wanted to sit and talk.

More often, though, I spent my skiing days with the kids as they honed their skiing prowess. We spent countless hours exploring kid-sized glades and hucking little airs in the mini park. I have a video of my 3-year-old son cruising down a beginner trail in a power wedge, then veering toward the woods near the bottom. “I want to ski powder,” he said, as he shuffled through an inch of fluff atop the groomed surface of the flats.

Nature or nurture? I don’t know. Probably a little bit of both. Gradually, the kids progressed to longer, steeper trails, the tight glades at the top of the mountain, hiking over the saddle for further exploration of hidden places, a faster skiing tempo.

These days I don’t often get to ski with my kids. The older two have embarked on their first year of race training, skiing with their coaches all weekend and learning how to carve fast, smooth turns into hard snow. The younger one is in a group of more than two dozen of the littlest would-be ski racers, which I help coach on weekends. This all means lots of skiing for each of us, just not together.

So Monday was a treat, an unscheduled day to do whatever we liked, and we like to ski, especially when there’s fresh snow and no overlying agenda. I ran sweep on each run, watching the kids negotiate soft powder interspersed with rigid hard pack, then making my own turns behind them.

The pace is slower than it was during my Colorado powder days, but considerably faster than that not-so-distant time spent on the pony slope. My skiing company Monday was a ski mom’s dream come true, and the thrill of skis through snow just as happy and fulfilling as ever.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 22, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.