No Snow Days Allowed

One of the early lessons we learned on Kwaj was that a person could, indeed, survive a full year, a complete trip around the sun, without so much as a single snowflake. Four years, in fact. I have made it my life's plan to experience another such existence, but alas, this plan shall have to wait a few years, probably until the boys are in college. But I predict a warm climate for this blogger's retirement years.

Why would I have days like this ...

... or this ...

... or this ...

or this ...

... when this ...

... qualifies as a snow day in San Antonio, Texas?  I kid you not: a snow day. A classes-cancelled, government-offices-opening-late, honest-to-God snow day. Can you see my nephew Isaac inside that heavy winter coat? No? That's because he's in a sweatshirt! For the record, he doesn't even own a winter coat. I own three: dressy, everyday, and a one just for snowblowing. Blowing snow blows.Unlike the Inuit, I don't need fifteen words to describe it. I only need four: It belongs somewhere else.

I have no use for snow. I don't ski, or skate or play ice hockey or make snow angels. I don't make ice cream out of snow.  My nose gets red and stays red the rest of the day. I look like I've been crying, or I've had too much to drink when I come in from the cold.  I really like hot cocoa, but I can make that a summer drink: I'll just turn my air conditioning on full blast. Yeah, that'll work.

Give me a good tropical  downpour any day of the week. It took some getting used to -- that bath water that fell from the sky on Kwaj. I can recall a dreary November day, the first day of the rainy season there in 1998. Maybe I had the a/c set a little too low, because I was kind of chilly. I looked outside before we left the house on our errands (as always on foot with the double stroller; I used the bike with the trailer as little as possible) and bemoaned to the boys, babies at the time, the grey and bone-chilling kind of November day I was so used to and was surely unconsciously expecting. I even took off my usual flipflops, trading them in for  socks and sneakers. Then I opened the door, and the warmest, humidest solid block of air I had ever felt knocked me backwards. Especially during the rainy season, you had to have at least a couple of sets of clothes planned for the day, because you knew you'd get rained on at least once. You had to plan photography ahead, because you had to give your camera 20 minutes to adjust from the dry 70's inside the house to the humid 88 it invariably was outside. The lens would instantly fog over, like eternally living in your bathroom after a hot shower. 

But by golly, it didn't snow once. And we lived to tell the story!