“It’s supposed to start around seven this evening,” I explained. “That’s what all the meteorological reports suggest.” The slight bit of icy snow that frosted the ground yesterday was not enough to do much of anything, one would think, but when you’re on the South, any amount of “snow” is significant for children. So the suggestion that we might have even more snow was the stuff of sweet dreams as the kids plodded off to bed. “Is it snow?” was the mantra of the evening, but they went to sleep with complete confidence with the weather reports, knowing that they were only off by the time.

From the moment they woke up, the kids were at the window, ready to go out, ready to play in the snow. “There’s so much snow!” E chirped again and again. It’s only the second or third time the Boy has seen snow, so any snow at all is significant. When Dziadek was sick a few years ago, K to the Boy with her for a visit in the middle of January, and so E saw real snow, deep snow, snow that covers everything and utterly transforms the whole landscape, but of course he doesn’t remember it.

When we finally made it outside, we had a dilemma: the young man who was sledding with us yesterday had come in the morning and taken his sleds with us. What to do? “I guess we sled like I did when I was a kid,” K said. And so we took an old sleeping bag — though, properly speaking, it should have been straw — and used it to stuff a garbage bag. K also thought we might try E’s old inner-tube we used at the pool. “It’s not like we use it anymore.” As the finishing touch, our neighbors invited us to use their yard — slightly smoother and with fewer trees.

When the kids came in, they were soaked. And that’s as it should be.