Matching Tracksuits

"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.

Tuesday we had a snow day. The Boy was so thrilled at the prospect of playing in the snow that it really didn't matter that there was no snow to speak of. All Monday evening he was talking about getting to play in the snow, getting to make a snow man, throw snowballs, shovel snow with his backhoe.

I knew that there was little chance of snowball fights, snowmen, or much else. But I'd also known that a bigger storm was coming later in the week. A real storm. So I reassured the Boy that we would have plenty of snow to play in come Thursday.

The Boy didn't mind the small amount of snow, though. Snow is snow, and as long as it was something he could shove around with his toys, he was thrilled.

We were all excited about Wednesday's storm, though. They kept shifting the start time, further and further back, from late afternoon to early evening, but the intensity only grew. Three to five inches eventually became a possibility up to ten inches -- a real snow storm.

Wednesday during class when students asked when certain assignments were due, I kept saying things like, "If this storm is anything like they're saying it will be, we won't be coming back until Monday, so we'll make it due then."

Finally the snow began, and it looked so promising, falling so thick and hard that it was possible even to capture it in a picture. I thought of the few great snow storms of my youth in southwest Virginia, where it rarely snowed but every few years would let loose a great storm that piled drifts three or more feet deep. Snow so deep that one had to pack it down before sledding was even a remote possibility. Snow that turned everything into a white blanket. Of course there's no comparing that to the seven winters I spent in southern Poland, the winters that were the norm of K's youth, where there was so much snow that even I got sick of it.

The governor had already declared a state of emergency, and all the reporters, after literally reporting on half an inch of snow Tuesday with giddy delight, were all probably flushed with anticipation. The school district canceled school before we'd even completed Wednesday's schedule, and friends posted pictures on social media of virtually empty bread aisles in local supermarkets.

But when we woke up this morning, expectant, we found a repeat of Tuesday, a thin layer of slush that seemed destined to melt shortly after lunch.

Local news web sites quickly offered stories explaining what happened. "The moisture was there," meteorologists explained, "but the temperature just popped up two degrees and that changed everything." Our official total, as opposed to five or more inches, was 0.8 inches. Further north there were totals more like what we were promised, but nothing really that impressive. Headlines developed through the day: "National Weather Service stands by Upstate snow forecast." It seemed everyone was disappointed on one level or another.

Still, we had enough slush on the ground to roll a small snowman, enough slush to get in boots and make the Girl complain, enough slush to get the Boy cold in a few minutes and whining to go inside.

But not enough snow even to get all the ground damp.

We in the South take what we can get when it comes to snow, though. Supposedly areas of Alabama and Mississippi got close to ten inches, so perhaps by the time it got here -- well, who knows. We had slush, we built a slushman, and headed in late morning knowing perfectly well that we would be going to school tomorrow.