Creating Extraordinary Memories in the Snow

This weekend’s snowfall was wonderful! Because I have lived in coastal South Carolina my entire life, seeing snow on the ground is a rarity. Even when local meteorologists predict a chance of snow, I have learned over the years not to get my hopes up.

This past Friday morning, I still sounded cynical about the chances of snow when my 11th and 12th graders asked if I thought it was going to snow…as if I was an expert. The buzz around school all morning was the snow was coming our way. Even one of my colleagues, a native West Virginian, said she “smelled snow in the air.”

I kept checking the local forecast online, and by lunchtime, I began to get excited because it appeared that this time, IT WAS GOING TO SNOW IN CONWAY! I even stopped by the grocery store on the way home from school in the event it snowed so much I couldn’t get out Saturday.

By late afternoon, I was getting ready for my usual Friday night date with my daddy. Since my mom died 2 ½ years ago, my dad and I go out to dinner on Friday night and then to the grocery store to get a few things he needs each week. While I was spending time with my daddy, my husband and kids were helping my in-laws with a church dinner.

My 10-year-old daughter Molly was so excited that snow was on the way. The only other time it has snowed in her lifetime, she was too young to remember it. My 13-year-old son Jesse went on a ski trip last year, so at least he had played in the snow. I watched the 6:00 newscast to see when the snow was going to begin. By this time, snow was already falling in Florence, Marion, and Murrells Inlet. But wait a minute…shouldn’t it be snowing in Conway too? What was going on? According to Ed Piotrowski, it was snowing in Conway, but the air was so dry in the upper atmosphere that the snow was evaporating before it reached the ground. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!!

A thrilled Molly called me around 6:30 from her grandparents’ church to say it was snowing. She was about 7 miles away…still no snow where I was. My dad and I left for the grocery store around 7:15, and when we walked outside, I saw a spectacular sight…beautiful huge snowflakes dancing everywhere! The snow had arrived, and it was coming down hard. By the time by dad and I finished his grocery shopping a little while later, the snow was still coming down.

I experienced a bittersweet moment thinking that my mom always loved to see it snow…and the few times it snowed during my childhood, she always made snow cream …adding vanilla extract, sugar, and milk to fresh snow. For a few minutes, I ached for my mama. I thought about her grave at Hillcrest Cemetery. I thought how beautiful the red and white roses on her grave must look with snowflakes glistening on them.

By the time my husband Bryan and the kids got home around 9:00, our yard was covered with snow. All Molly could talk about was making a snow angel…she could hardly wait until morning. I stayed up until midnight, periodically walking outside to make sure the snow was still coming down. When I finally went to bed, I checked on my kids, and I saw that Jesse had left the blinds open in his room. He was still awake and lay in the bed watching the snow coming down right outside his window.

I love to sleep in on Saturday morning, but this didn’t happen on the morning after we received a whopping 5 inches of snow in our yard. I’m not sure who had more fun yesterday morning… my children or our dogs - a 5-year-old black lab and a 3-month-old brown lab. Together we built an “interesting” looking snowman…Molly made a snow angel...Jesse rolled around in the snow over and over with the dogs crawling all over him…we threw snowballs at one another…we laughed and played until Molly had to leave to go to a birthday party.

By mid-afternoon, we back doing ordinary tasks after spending a morning creating extraordinary memories. But one more special memory was made when Molly came home from the birthday party…my little snow angel ran over to our “interesting” looking snowman and gave him a big kiss…and it didn’t even matter to her that his head had fallen off by this time.