Please excuse me. I seem to have taken a bite of Proust's madeleine on this snowy day. There is something about a snow day that sends you back in time ...
On the day I am visiting, I am in college. It is almost spring, yet it snowed enough that classes are cancelled. Professors may stay at home, safe and warm. A campus full of young adults have been liberated from the responsibility of getting an education for the day. What to do? What to do ...?
Trays from the cafeteria make the best sleds. I make a mental note to take them back later --I work in the cafeteria when I'm not being a student. Trash bags make a decent substitute, but they lack the rigidity of the lunch trays, so they are not as fast. I try both.
The hill by the library (across campus from my dorm) has the best sledding hill, and so, many of us have gathered there. In our chaos, we manage not to run into each other. We are like starlings sledding down the hill, an order to our chaos. We slide down on trays by ourselves. We slide down on trash bags with our friends, the snow bumping against our bottoms under the cold, black plastic.
WHEE! Whee! Whee.
The excitement wears off. The cold is more noticeable. There's a snowball fight going on over there. A snow fort sounds like a good idea. But my friends want to keep sledding. I decide to make my own excitement.
I vaguely remember flipping over. Backwards sledding seemed like such a great idea five minutes ago. The sharp snap in my arm corrects me --it's a horrible idea.
The nurse's office is on the other side of campus, and the campus is a happy war zone. Bodies flying around. Snowballs whizzing past heads. My friends form a convoy around me. I didn't ask for it, but there they are, fending off errant projectiles. We make it without head injuries to accompany what turns out to be my broken arm. A small victory.
Today is a snow day. Children sled on real sleds. Trees, irritated by gravity and the subtle warming of the day, lob their snowballs at my head as I walk underneath. I march through the blank white and leave a trail of two solitary boot prints.
There is something special about a snowy day.
No comments:
Post a Comment