On most school mornings, our second grader fights the dawn.
She wraps herself like a mummy in the covers, clutching her pastel unicorn blanket around her like armor against the day. Wardrobe fights ensue. Pants are a constant bone of contention (somehow, the ones she owns are always out of style). “One more bite” of waffle is an excuse to delay stepping out the door.
But not today.
Today was a snow day.
Around 7:30 a.m., instead of yelling complaints about her alarm, she bounced into our bedroom, clambered onto the adult bed, tucked herself in my plush blanket, and asked for a cuddle.
Our eighth grader barged in.
“Have you seen the outside?” she declared, and off they dashed to the tall living room windows to witness the last gasp of the blizzard.
This snow day wasn’t an easy one, following on the heels of a week off from school for February break. Family time had started feeling deeply overrated. Somewhere around last Thursday, the lack of schedule and structure became more debilitating than freeing.
The kids, aged 8 and almost 14, were so done with us that they spent the weekend communicating mostly in eye rolls, deep sighs, and complaints about lunchtime.
But the snow gave everyone a fresh perspective.
There’s novelty in “living in a snow globe,” as our eighth grader calls it.
I’ll call it the reset we all needed.
Of course, I worry about the lost schooling. Our eighth grader has several Regents high school exams scheduled for this spring. She’s in a drama studio production of “Romeo & Juliet,” and they’ve lost key rehearsal time.
Our second grader’s class is unusually large this year, and they need all the classroom time they can get. A few weeks ago, during the last big snow, they actually had some productive lessons on the snowy remote day.
Meanwhile, our living room TV broke last week. We don’t allow a lot of screen time, but a whole snow day without any “Gilmore Girls” or “Hannah Montana” (we’ve been on an old-school streak) felt panic-worthy.
But they rolled with it shockingly well.
For one single day, I felt like we were living in a throwback to a simpler time. That often sounds cliché, but clichés stick around because they ring true.
Art supplies that had long felt more aspirational than functional (if we have them, maybe the kids will use them?) dotted the dining table. The teen tried her sister’s watercolors, and no one fought over possession. A fort arose in the living room. We had volunteers to help shovel and salt. At one point, the dog got stuck in the piles drifting around our postage-stamp backyard.
The second grader was sent to pull him out. They spent a happy half-hour throwing and eating snowballs. (Yes, both of them — ew!)
I invited over a neighbor kid, figuring no matter how blustery the morning, they could stagger a few doors down for a playdate.
The block felt safer than ever. Closed roads and shuttered delivery apps meant no cars, and no e-bikes bombing down the sidewalk. Snow piles towered higher than their heads along the curb, an extra barrier.
The two second graders played for over an hour outside, on their own, giddy with the novelty of freedom from parental oversight.
Every snow bank became a slide. There’s a snowman somewhere. When they finally needed a break, we had hot chocolate and granola bars.
There’s something about snow pants and gloves lining the radiators to dry that feels like peak parenting, like we’re characters in “Leave It to Beaver” or “Little Women,” a long line of moms and dads watching over a core childhood experience. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a part of Maryland that almost never saw snow. I only read about such days; now I get to partake with my kids.
We often can’t predict what becomes core memories for our kids, but happy, active snow days feel like a chance to appreciate that as it happens.
Like our very own “Miracle on 34th Street,” our girls stopped arguing for a morning. The eye rolls dissipated. The neighboring second grader went home, picked up by her dad on a sled he tied around his waist to pull her down the street.
Soon after, another eighth grader appeared. The big kids voluntarily offered to take the little sister with them for a “wander.”
I don’t know the last time our kids, with their classes and afterschool activities and weekend sports, just … wandered.
Or allowed a tag along, much less without us parents demanding it.
Miracles, indeed.
At one point during the day, I stood on the threshold of our brownstone apartment building, in a thick flannel and fuzzy Crocs, sipping coffee as I watched the kids climb an especially tall snow pile from someone’s shoveling. They flopped and slid down, cackling.
A neighbor walked down the center of the street, laughing at them, enjoying the sight of happy kids playing.
“It’s good to be a kid on a snow day,” I shouted.
‘You know it!” he shouts back.
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