I was expecting a cold wet wind as I walked out of the drugstore...I saw the skies darkening as I went in so I braced for a familiar whoosh of chilling February air and readied my umbrella upon my exit. What I didn't expect was snow....big, fluffy, airy flakes...floating down from the sky like feathers from a shredded pillow. I gasped in amazement, and then I laughed aloud...and I couldn't stop. Tears streaked my face as I spun in a circle across the parking lot, sticking my tongue out like I had as a child, hoping to catch as many flakes as I could. I hadn't seen snow such as this in many years, and like a familiar smell often does, the snowflakes took me back to the magic of my childhood. My heart felt light and happy....I was 5 years old again, anxious to see the flakes stick to the grass. I must have looked pretty silly to anyone that saw me, but I didnt care. I had found a feeling that Id lost so very long ago. I sang along to the radio all the way home, dazzled at the beauty of the first fallen snow sticking along the rooftops, pines and oaks. The world became so quiet. It was beautiful.

I wondered how I had come to hate the snow once I'd grown up. It was a pain, it was heavy, a nuisance, a headache. I couldn't wait to be free of it and all of those Midwestern dreary winters when I left my hometown near Chicago. And then I was...free of it all.

No more white Christmas, no more sledding, snowballs or even mittens. No more slush or snowmen or the sounds of shovels and snowblowers. No scarves, red noses, boots, or parkas.

I didn't miss it much my first year away, but by the time the 3rd rolled around, winter seemed hollow, lost somehow. After ten years I could hardly recall what the crunch of the snow underfoot had felt like, forgotten how to make a snow angel, lost what was essentially a very important part of growing up.

It wasn't until that first flake of snow...leading way to the white blanketing of landscape...that I realized what Id taken for granted so many years before. It wasn't until I built a snowman with my youngest child that I recalled my father building my first with me. It wasn't until I heard all the laughter that I remembered how something so simple could be worth so very much more.