Think 'White Christmas' singing with this post's title, but maybe change the wording to 'ice'. Or the Hallelujah chorus singing at top volume. That's how the science teacher chose to express this on facebook....
Today, blissfully, gratefully, surprisingly, I got news that school had been cancelled.
I went outside to my screened in porch this morning and stood there in my pajamas and drank hot coffee with real cream and sugar. I heard the rain falling on the snow (weird) and smelled the fresh, cold air and heard the trucks all over town dropping salt and making things less scary for driving. (The many hills in Stillwater are NOT to be reckoned with unless there is salt on the road.) I just stood there and let it all soak in. It was beautiful.
It is SO fun to celebrate this announcement at the crack of dawn. We all remember something like this from our childhoods, I am sure, if we grew up with snow. Now, I will tell you that as a teacher, this feeling is equally as thrilling, if not more. Today teacher responsibilities met 'STILLWATER PUBLIC SCHOOLS - CLOSED TODAY' on all the major news channels.
And it was wonderful.
I'm talking about that moment when you're flipping through the channels and looking for updates online and you keep scrolling through the alphabet and see all of the other schools cancelled and you're hoping, and hoping, and then it gets to the letter S, and there's that moment of surprise, and you really DO gasp, and the realization that you can stay in your jammies washes over you, and really, at that point I always scream. Every time. And do a few fist pumps for good measure. The perk of teaching is that you still have this feeling in your adult life, usually every few years, and it's STILL worth the wait.
EVERY time.
This week when 7th grade boys were knowingly telling me about weather patterns, I felt like the kid and they, momentarily, seemed like adults. They would say, 'Miss Christians, this thing will probably just blow over and it looks like it's going to miss us completely.' But I didn't care, and I would say, 'Who knows, guys, who knows.' We have to wait for that pivotal moment at 5 am when administrators are looking at the roads and wondering about visibility and windchill and timing. That's when this sort of thing comes together. (I've asked about this and this is what they told me.)
My stance is always this: if we don't get a snow day when we hope for it, of course we go to our jobs and do things well. I would have to push the reset button on my attitude but that wouldn't be hard. You have to suck it up and have a good attitude about a lot of things sometimes. And I like my job a lot. But why NOT anticipate and hope and wonder about something that is SO wonderful?
Do you remember those teachers who scoffed at snow days? I do. And I am always incredulous. I remember sitting in desks as a student thinking, 'What is your problem? Why are you so serious? This work will be here for us tomorrow. Who CARES if we don't get to this lesson until the next day?' It still baffles me, but I like that I seem to work with many people who don't say things like this in the teachers' lounge.
I would say that a mantra for many teachers I know is that you HAVE to be flexible in teaching. That what makes you good. Otherwise you get persnickety and no one likes to work with you.
Moving on.
The power went out at my house last night for two hours, and I will admit to you that the first thought I had was, 'We'd BETTER get school cancelled tomorrow. It would be difficult to reconcile this sort of winter weather situation with the trek to school in the morning.' My second thought was, 'It's really hard to grade by candlelight. I should just read magazines until the lights come back on.' And this is what I did.
Most everyone else I know still had power. And this is when I began to feel like my parents' kid more than ever. A friend of mine invited me over in case I was scared to be alone. And it really didn't occur to me to be scared about the dark until she said that. But I think this is the stoic Dutch upbringing rationally putting things in their place. I couldn't do much more than accept that it was dark, and find candles.
Honestly, what felt worse was going out in the snow and ice. I've grown up with a dad who has told numerous stories about winter survival and how to live through a blizzard. Every winter my car is fully equipped with things that preserve you if you are buried in a snowbank. I used to scoff about this, but now I'm grateful. This healthy respect for weather so continually discussed in my childhood makes next steps in a situation obvious and ok. And last night this did included the knowledge that I do own a turn-crank flashlight. (Thanks, Dad.)
So I read and recharged the flashlight when it got dim, listened to the silence and heard the wind blow and felt compassion for people who live without electricity. It's a feeling that I hadn't experienced in a long time.
I woke up at 4 am and heard the rain hitting my window. (A very good sign.) At 6 am, I checked for cancellations. I was elated to see that the list had gotten longer since 4 am (yes, I did sleep with the computer next to me) and JOLTED awake when I saw Stillwater was 2 hours late. Leigh and I celebrated through gmail chat, and then I went back to sleep. And then my mom called and said that school was officially cancelled. (See above paragraphs for the ever timeless reaction to this news.) And then I called my friend and apologetically woke her up from sleep and gave her the news.
And this is where snow days REALLY seemed cultural.
On Monday I told Leigh about memories in my childhood of school cancellations. No surprise, I got really dreamy about it, and provided all sorts of details. (The hope was STRONG for this on Monday.) It was always a huge celebration at the crack of dawn when my dad would barge into the room where my brother and I were sleeping in bunk beds and announce that there was no school. We would wake up and scream and jump around and then we'd all eat breakfast, because at our house it wasn't that fun to go back to sleep. SO fun. My dad always did this well, even though in the end, he still had to go to work.
Fast forward to this week, and waking Leigh up to give her the news. I knew I had to call her because she thought that we were still 2 hours late, and I wanted to the bliss of no school to set in as soon as possible. When she heard the news, she said, 'This is just what we talked about the other day. It IS fun to have someone wake you up and tell you like this. Just the way that your dad always did it when you were little.'
So, so true.
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