Every morning on our way to school, William reads the temperature. It appears in Fahrenheit on a little digital screen just above my head and, when I push the button, it reappears in Celcius.
William likes to practice the conversion in his head, then have me check to see how close he got.
Of course, we are always hoping for 32 or lower (Fahrenheit) or 0 or lower (Celcius). When we get to temperatures like these, then we hope for precipitation.
We Really Really Really want snow.
It didn’t snow At All last year. I think we didn’t even get a little flurry. It was a joke of a winter. It was all Make Believe. It was Very Disappointing.
But last year Bill and I took a little trip to Switzerland and Germany in March and enjoyed All Kinds of Snow. When we got back, we didn’t mind that the mild North Carolina winter was giving way to spring.
This year we have daffodils making an early appearance. Some of the neighborhood trees have been fooled into blooming. The words Global Warming come to mind with increasing frequency. I am thinking of buying a Prius.
On the way home from school today, I almost apologized to the children that we live in North Carolina. They don’t know how impoverished their childhood is without snow, but I do. I remember it all so well: the audible silence of the snow as it falls, the soft purity of a white lawn untouched, the blackness of bare branches under the whiteness, the joy of sledding until you can’t feel your feet and then coming in for hot chocolate and a fresh pair or mittens and heading back out into it again, the spray of the snow in your face as you fly down the hill….
We’ve gotten that once or twice since we’ve lived here, but all of it was a long time ago now.
It is supposed to sleet or ice or, maybe, snow tonight. I am intrigued, but I’m afraid to get my hopes up.
We’ll see….
Speicher, Switzerland March 2006
