Snow is coming. It will start this afternoon and go all night. The sky already has the look of snow about it. It is quite cold and will get colder. Yesterday I filled the bird feeders. Today I have a few things to pick up, and I assume I’ll be jockeying with the bread and milk crowd for a parking space. It always astounds me that everyone is out of bread and milk just before the snow falls. It must be a cultural phenomenon.

The weather men are hedging their forecasts. One station predicts between 8 and 10 inches while the other says between 8 and 12. The only thing they agree on is the Cape will get more snow than the rest of the state. Oh joy!

I remember when I was a kid hoping for a snow day. I’d watch the snow fall looking through the picture window in the living room. A street light was just at the bottom of the front lawn, and I’d watch the snow fall in the light. It was always so pretty glinting as it fell. In those days, the TV didn’t scroll the closed schools, but the fire station in town blew the signal early in the morning. When I was older, in high school in a different town, I had to listen to the radio to find out if my school was closed. It never mattered how old I was, a day off from school was cause for celebration. It was like an unexpected present.

My dad never let a snow storm slow him down. He always went to work. He’d get up early and shovel to the car then clear it to get it on the road. In the old days he had chains on his tires then when they went out of style, he had snow tires put on his car at the start of every winter. The other tires were stored in the cellar waiting for better weather. We lived on a hill, and it was tough going up and down. About in the middle the hill rose a bit, and that’s where cars would slide going up. Sometimes going down was so slippery cars would take the side road and avoid the hill altogether. For us kids, a no school day meant a day sledding on the hill. I can still remember the excitement of holding the sled, running, jumping on and speeding down that hill. We had the joy of flying.