Where We Are This Week

Snow days.

Reverse, reverse! This week, we’ll do things a little differently. News and politics will take a backseat as the introduction I had planned grew much longer than I had anticipated. So, with that said, here are the things I paid some attention to - and the briefest of commentary.

• the WEF is back in Davos this week. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.

• Iran conducted military strikes within Pakistan and vice versa. Red rover, red rover, send Pakistan over.

• Crisis at the border. Solution: if we have no border, there is no crisis.

• The US strikes Houthi militants in the Red Sea. Houthis strike back. Only commercial shipping is discouraged.

• China’s economy is in trouble. Reports suggest that Uyghurs can’t afford those re-education camps anymore.

• Trump wins Iowa, will win the presidency.

• More than 100 hostages have now spent more than 100 days in captivity inside Gaza. How many days does it take for ‘ceasefire now’ chants to be drowned out by choruses of ‘bring them home.’

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Snow in Tennessee

Around this time last year, I remember talking about black ice in this newsletter. Now, we may have had a chance to familiarize ourselves with this covert calamity-in-waiting, but this year we’re shifting our focus elsewhere.

This winter, I’d like to direct your attention to white ice; black ice’s unassuming cousin, also known as snow.

Living in middle Tennessee all of my life, snow has been quite the fickle friend. Promises of snow never seem to be fulfilled, and most of the time, when it does come to fruition, it’s whisked away by the first hint of sunlight. Or, my personal favorite, it melts upon the impact of the ground because the day before it had been 65º outside. Those days, however, when the stars must have aligned and veritable inches fell from the skies, were days of unadulterated exhaustion, magic, and wonder.

Those qualities were undoubtedly made possible by youth - the fascination multiplier. I remember begrudgingly donning layers upon layers of movement-restricting clothing, snow boots, and snow gloves to trudge out into the stuff. The sound alone triggers a whole host of memories - from pulling our sleds up the hill in our neighborhood to making snowmen - or eating snow at the bottom of said hill until my dad yelled down for me to stop.

My parents always made things fun. My being home from school was never an inconvenience. In high school, while everyone was too cool or too lame to go out and play, my dad took me and my best friend to an embankment near the interstate where all three of us hurled ourselves on sleds down the slope for hours.

After you leave school, the added benefit of school closure is lamentably absent. The threshold for sufficient snowfall to close a business is significantly higher than county schools’. Every once in a while, however, the bike shop where I worked would close if it seemed business would be rendered moot by the weather, and we employees would hope on our bikes to see what trouble we could get into.

The last big snow - I use the word big liberally - we had, my wife and I went to the greenway by the river. She was pregnant at the time so we weren’t there for strenuous activity or something like that, but just to enjoy the snow, the cold, and the water. She was beautiful with the snowflakes in her hair, and her belly beneath her coat. It was the last time before our two sets of tracks would be three.

This year, I was cranky about the snow. No school was closing for me, no job was paying me to stay home. It was forecasted that we’d get up to seven inches, I scoffed at the notion. As it turned out, though, my Monday was spent in disbelief as it snowed all day long, continuing from the night before. Every few moments, I’d point outside saying, “Look!” The cynicism of the whole thing was all but gone by the time the grass was covered. My enthusiasm is instinctual; cynicism is a learned, regrettable attribute.

If any glum attitude of mine was still managing to hang about, it was dispersed the moment we got our little girl up that morning. If she had seen snow last year, it wasn’t anything like this and she certainly didn’t remember it. When we opened her curtains, she was gesturing outside, obviously confused as to why her yard was now white.

My wife commented earlier this week about how one of the best things about parenthood is reliving your own childhood through the experiences of your child. Thus, the dressee becomes the dresser. Over the past few days, we’ve probably spent more time pulling on mittens, double pairs of socks, and extra layers of clothing on her than we have actually playing outside - it’s been unquestionably worth it, however, just to hear her emphatic response when asked if she likes the snow. The smile that was once ours is now hers - and then, consequently, is ours again. Perpetual reciprocity.

The downside of it all has been that our one-and-a-half-year-old is unable to walk in the snow for very long until she falls. Unperturbed - she has her father’s disposition when it comes to spills - she soldiers on. But, because virtually all of her outerwear is cotton, the short countdown until we’re forced back inside immediately begins.

In our bonus room, I was lamenting to my wife that our daughter wasn’t quite old enough to go sledding, and I couldn’t quite figure out a creative solution for a new snow activity suited to her abilities. I was tossing around this dead-end, hair-brained idea of attaching old skateboards to her bike trailer when, she, quite prophetically, began pushing around a laundry basket in our bonus room. I pointed at the basket in punctuating eureka.

When I was little, my dad used to drag me and my sister around on our icy neighborhood streets in laundry baskets. Tying a rope to the handle and telling us to hold on, he’d tow us from curb to curb; I can still hear the plastic on the slush/ice/snow/asphalt-covered ground. As my wife got the girl ready, I ran out to the shed to find something with which to tow her. Returning with a metal cable - it wasn’t the yellow rope of my youth, but it would do - we were in business.

The next half hour or so was spent running up and down our street in twenty-odd-degree weather while my wife, standing at the edge of the driveway, cheered us on. When did we become my parents?

In the third grade, I won a drawing contest for mood, not skill.

Stepping into the shoes of my father has been as rewarding as it has been edifying, and watching my wife seamlessly transition into the maternal figure of our young family has been preternatural.

I’ve written about this before, about the lengths you will go to as parents to see your kid happy - but that’s not quite it, there are fewer steps than that. It’s not that your kid’s happiness begets your own - the transitive property leaves one too many variables to solve - and it’s not that one follows the other; they’re simultaneous.

When I was a boy in a laundry basket, I reveled in the immediacy of the thrill and the adoration expressed by my parents. I hadn’t the slightest inkling of what they were thinking until recently. Now, that I’m learning the lines and performing this new role, I’m immersed. It’s not just the prospect of her enjoyment that motivates me to wear myself out, it’s the exhilaration of service and deference that puts the same toothy grin on my face that I was wearing two decades ago.

Last weekend, we were driving home from the coffee shop through downtown. In the roundabout, there were a couple of kids loading up new sleds they had just bought from the local hardware store. Holden Hardware in downtown Murfreesboro is the type of shop that may or may not have the drill bit you’re looking for, but, for a buck, you can buy a glass bottle of Coke to assuage the inconvenience. Every winter, they put those sleds in the shop window, but I never imagine who’s buying them. It’s like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

In an instant, the hope and excitement of these two kids was evident - the sight could’ve persuaded even the most unbiased of observers. There’s nothing quite like the anticipation of school getting called off and waking up to the white, muffled outdoors just outside of your window. My wife turned and said, "Oh, I hope it snows. Just for them.”

Five days on since then and the snow still hasn’t melted. I may have started the week as a curmudgeon, but the curiosity and innocence of our daughter made quick work of that. We may have been ill-prepared, but that didn’t stop us from venturing into the snow multiple times each day despite the fact the preparation and recovery of the whole operation took longer than the activity itself. As I mentioned earlier, though, it’s only a small price to pay.

“It’s not only that you get to relive childhood memories,” she said. “It’s that you get to create those experiences for her.”

The continuity of fascination from youth to adulthood is a blessing all in itself. The misconception is that the phenomenon is something that is only witnessed when in reality it is something with which to be engaged. After all, it’s all the more magic when you’ve had a hand in making it.

To a better next week,

Cheers,

~FDA