Regrets of the Snow Day

published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, January 21st, 2011
If you were looking for something funny and uplifting, it won’t be here today. Sorry. I’m in a bit of a mood. Perhaps it was that snow day we had this week. I should be grateful, right? At least it was a mutual snow day, where I had the day off as well as my children, and that should be a blessing: being home, baking cookies, all that sort of good stuff, right?


That’s how your mind’s eye sees things, and sometimes that is a huge problem, that irritating mind’s eye. It sees and records things, all sorts of unreasonable things, and then it tries to control the rest of your being to get everything to fall into line that way.


I remember the time I had to run into the model home in our subdivision where the builders and/or developers were trying to peddle the last of their overpriced wares. I accidentally walked through – okay, lingered and lusted after – the interior of the model home. People with six children, a dog, and piles and piles of laundry that are rivaled only by the piles and piles of paper that are inherent with any schooling activity, should not be allowed to enter a model home. Period. It’s unhealthy and downright depressing to see all the perfection of such a place. The hyper decorated and uber-matched everything assaults your dignity when you realize that the only thing that is decorating your own white-walls-only home is assorted boogers left to dry on various walls …some walls more than others, and I’m not going to say where.


Of course, you realize as you go through the model home that the place is completely sterile – there is no one sleeping in or jumping on the beds. There are no toys, no books, no music, no life. There is nothing but canned perfection. Most annoying of all was that cleaning van dutifully parked to scrub that house every week. Forwhat? Cleaning the house was the only activity in that house. There was no life in it.


So you return to your home, trying to bolster yourself with self-righteous thoughts of how much life and activity you have in your home. Yours is a REAL house, because there is joy and laughter and there is bound to be a batch of freshly baked cookies. When you get home, there is bickering and teasing and the only activity seems to be generating more laundry and papers and possible “decorations.” Then you remember that, of yeah – none of us should be eating cookies, we’re supposed to be eating apple chunks and carrot slices, remember?


Why have some people still not brushed their teeth? Who is letting the dog, with her adorable yet sheddy self, slouch on those blankets you just spent a day washing? Before you know it, your aspirations to be that wonderful parent are drowned out by your own nagging and shouting.


Why couldn’t you have shut off your mind’s eye? Why can’t you shut your mouth? Why is it so active and envious? Why weren’t you strong enough to be joyful to come home to this and to give thanks that you have four walls, at least you have children, and least you have been given today. Because people are getting on your nerves, that’s why.


So this past snow day started out with the whole laughter-and-love theme, and it ended in a bit of bickering. I’ve heard various solutions to the bickering issue. I knew a lady who had only daughters, and when any of the daughters argued or fought with each other, as they tended to do in pairs, they were made to go and remain together in small, confined quarters until they were ready to forgive and forget each other. Oh, sorry – only forgive each other – I think it was the argument they were supposed to forget. (I don’t think the mom meant putting them in a broom closet and then forgetting that she had instructed them to stay there.)


I have done the “do not play with each other” technique in which the bickering duo is absolutely banned from any interaction with the offending party. This usually works like a charm, because kids can handle almost anything other than boredom: even battling each other is enormously more entertaining than the silence and loneliness. Sometimes I think this is the philosophy nations adhere to as well.


I know you might be familiar with that old “Arbeit macht frei” slogan of the Nazi camps – you know, that work makes you free, and I’ve sort of employed the same philosophy, except here it’s the children working that makes me free. If anybody’s going to waste time arguing and fighting, I have my simple “arbeit” solution. I put them to work. Things get done, people are occupied with something slightly more productive than annoying each other, and they get a little more careful about how they spend their free time.


Tomorrow might be another snow day. I hope to use it better. Maybe we’ll forget everything else. Maybe we’ll just play chess and make those cookies after all.