"Are you kidding?" That is the exact phrase that the meteorologist put on her seven-day forecast this morning to soften the blow that snow is predicted next week, again.
Three months ago I had never heard of a "polar vortex" and if asked, would have told you it must describe something in a Star Wars movie. Now, just like all of you, I'm familiar with those words not one time, or two times, but three times over.
I've lost count, but I think the snow total for the season is just shy of 70 inches. And I know that this winter has beat all sorts of records; from the fewest days above freezing, to the amount of Lake Michigan that is frozen. And then there's a new one, the most consecutive weekends interrupted by a major weather event.
It's been a tough winter and there are signs of it all around. Our town's holiday decorations are frozen in the ground, still displayed and prolonging a goofy tradition that my children and I have. Every year in late November or December when those decorations first appear in the town square, we do this silly little thing where we drive by and sing holiday songs. But three and half months later, the game is old and my preschooler doesn't understand that Santa is not coming to town, despite the fact that his house is sitting right there next to the library.
The kids have missed school, the heating bill that just arrived is plenty hefty, our gate is frozen shut and we haven't been able to take our recycling out for weeks. Our car is filthy. Our coats are filthy. They've been sliding along the side of that filthy car in tight parking lots, with spaces claimed by plowed snow mountains. We've lost countless gloves, leaving a mudroom scattered with singles in mismatched colors and sizes (by the way, my kids are wearing those mismatched singles to school and waving one hand mittened in pink nylon and the other gloved in blue wool. I refuse to buy new ones so late in the season. After all, this winter is almost over, right? Right?!)
Despite my belly-aching about winter, this isn't just another post on your Facebook newsfeed complaining about the weather. It is a post about the weather, but told from a different point of view. Don't worry, I'm not going to rah-rah the winter. I know it's been brutal. But for just a bit, I'm going to stop and try to see this season through the eyes of my children. When I do, I realize that this is not a winter of record lows, rather it's a winter full of happiness and highs. For our kids, this could be the defining winter of their childhood, and the winter by which all others will be measured.
This has been a winter full of what my kids perceive as grand adventures as we've seen our local landscapes transformed. This is the winter that my kids learned to ice skate at the playground where they spend their summers swinging. And this is the winter when they went showshoeing through the Lincoln Park Zoo on a snowy and muted morning with only the roar of an animal as background noise.
Even in the intimacies of our own home, things look differently and are serving new purposes. This is the winter that our Living Room has become a holding place for cardboard box forts, for weeks on end. The kitchen table is a LEGO-building station because the dining room table is claimed by a jigsaw puzzle and board games. And our backyard is a maze of snow tunnels and igloos that make up what the kids call their "bunker village."
Somewhere in the middle of that imaginary village is a snowman that was built three days before Christmas. Over two months later, that snowman is still standing. As days go by, his head bobs in and out of drifting snow as it settles in new places with each passing gust. Over the last ten weeks our snowman will go away for a while as he is "drowned" in a new snowfall. But get this: he froze so solid that the newer, fluffy snow around him blows away and then we can see his head again. Thumpety-thump-thump, this might be the only snowman that my children will ever build who doesn't disappear, but reappears!
Magic. I'm reminded every time I drive by the schoolyard and see an evolving playground full of snow boulders and forts. I'm delighted knowing that the kids have created elaborate games of crystal mining and kingdoms during recess. The PE teachers did a unit that allowed the students to sled outside during gym class in preparation for the Olympics, and the USA/Canada men's semifinal hockey game was on a TV for the kids to watch during indoor recess and lunch. This is embracing it and this is the stuff memories are made of.
Back home, the kids built a luge run between the houses in our neighborhood and they went sledding down it every night for a week, right before coming inside and watching Olympians do the same thing on TV.
Surrounded by our own winter wonderland, we watched skiing, bobsledding and skating while looking up Sochi on the map. The other day, we heard "Get Lucky" on the radio and my son laughed, saying it reminded him of the Russian Police Choir. As our family of five cuddled up and watched the giant bear blow out the flame, I felt a pang of nostalgia and processed how old each of my children will be in four years during the next Winter Olympics. I did the math in my head and had to catch my breath, after having it taken away by the digits 2018, then offered up a quiet prayer for consistency. I am desperate to try to preserve this and to have this exact moment with them again, yet I know it will be in a different form and different time, as we watch the lighting of the flame in South Korea.
This season, we've also been taken with another part of the world: Norway and its Kingdom of Arendelle! The magic of Disney has been sprinkled all over us and we've grown obsessed with all things from the wonderful movie Frozen. My son does a great Olaf, while my daughters duet the sister roles and the soundtrack plays over and over and over during our drives around town. I joke that the song "Fixer Upper" reminds me of their Daddy, which makes them, and me, erupt with laughter and giggles every time we hear it. My 3-year-old points to the icicles hanging outside her bedroom window and tells me they are scary. I'm confused until I realize that, of course, she thinks Elsa put them there.
So yes, this winter has been a really long one for you and for me. But for our kids, this will likely be the winter that settles right into that sacred spot of their hearts reserved for only the most special of times. This is the winter that will sharpen other memories and serve as a benchmark on the timeline of their childhood.
Years from now my kids will look at the fence in our backyard and remember how the snow once piled up around it all the way to the latch. Someday they'll be having a snowball fight with their college roommates and think about the battle they had with the neighborhood kids years earlier. And some morning, many years from now, school will once again be cancelled due to bad weather. My children will be adults, yet they will feel something familiar as they chuckle watching the expressions of delight swallow up their own children.
So much change is coming for our children as they grow and mature and become adults. But I believe that the emotions they feel during especially memorable times are the ones that will shape them and give them something steady to hold onto when the rest of it spins, morphs and evolves. We all need reassurance that while everything changes, some things stay the same. Sadly, we can't freeze time, but we can etch the feelings of a time into the mold of who we are, and who we are on our way to becoming.
And with that in mind, I am able to cling onto those emotions as I view this winter through the eyes and hearts of my children. Doing so reminds me that we are indeed in a season of wonder and I am coerced into a moment of gratitude for what my kids call an epic winter.
This post originally appeared on Carissa's blog, www.carissak.com. You can see more from Carissa by following her on Tumblr, carissakwriter.tumblr.com, Facebook at www.facebook.com/carissaKwriter, Twitter @CarissaK or Instagram, www.instagram.com/carissakwriter. Thanks for reading.