By Lori Borgman
I recently discovered an online calculator that can predict snow days.
There’s a catch to the Snow Day calculator — to get results you must enter your zip code and what type of school you attend. It only works for kids.
There are no snow days for grown-ups. So go warm up the car and drag out the ice melt.
And yet.
Our son who lives in Chicago says he instinctively knows when it snows at night and can’t sleep anticipating daybreak. He’s an 8-year-old kid trapped in the body of a 36-year-old man.
The snow they’ve been sounding alarms here for days has finally arrived. Frankly, it isn’t looking all that great. Not that I’ve had my nose pressed against the window monitoring it. Well, maybe a little.
The snow is granular — like dishwasher detergent before it came in pods.
You can barely call it a snowfall. It’s more like a snow sputter.
It’s been coming down for several hours and is barely covering the grass, just nestling in between the blades.
You can’t help but wonder if there is a heavier snowfall happening somewhere else. The snow is always deeper on the other side of the fence. One of the grands calls to say snow has covered the ground at her house.
Her mother can be heard in the background saying snow has not covered the ground.
“But it will,” says the voice on the other end, brimming with hope.
Flakes that look like dishwasher detergent now mingle with larger flakes looking like cotton balls. Not fresh, fluffy cotton balls, but teased out, scraggly looking cotton-balls.
This is what the hype was about? Ratty-looking cotton balls mixed with dishwasher detergent?
A while later there is a commotion outside. Snow is falling at an angle and birds are flocking to the feeder.
I grab a camera and freeze a chickadee on takeoff.
A bird in flight is an amazing wonder of beauty and engineering. The feet propel the launch, then the bird draws them in tight. Wings spread in graceful arcs and the bird’s beak, cresting the smooth curves of the dome-shaped head, slices through the air.
Birds land and depart and jostle one another around the feeder. It’s as frenetic as LaGuardia or Atlanta.
Snow is picking up and more uniform now. There is no swirling or spinning, just a fine sawdust cascading from a craftsman’s workbench.
By late afternoon, every inch of ground, every tree, car, mailbox and roof-top, have been layered with a blanket of down.
Daylight fades and the snow takes on a beautiful cast of blue. The blue grows deeper, darker and richer, culminating in a breathtaking sapphire before fading into night.
Maybe snow days aren’t just for kids after all.
Lori Borgman is an Indianapolis columnist. Send comments to [email protected].
