My Dalton Magazine column

Three days after Christmas I was sitting at the kitchen table with my wife and daughter. Three-year-old Rowan was gabbing about Santa Claus and elves and reindeer and presents and parties. During a break in her babbling I mentioned that Christmas was over.
She paused and looked at me and said, “But Christmas SEASON is still here!”
I felt the same way as a child. I wanted Christmas to last for days and days. Why not? School was closed, freeing up the whole day for fun.
Family was close and everyone was in a good mood, or tried to be.
Gifts and food and friends and family.
Why couldn’t life be like this 365 days a year?
But as much as we want to hold on to the best of times,they always slip from our grasp. Life bends back to the average. The glow of Christmas sparks again briefly at New Year’s and then dies in the grim cold of January and February.
I am a firm believer in the maxim that “Every day above ground is a good day.” But surely there are some days better than others and not many of those better days come in January and February.
Super Bowl Sunday.
My birthday.
The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.
Snow.
I like snow.
Growing up in North Georgia I wasn’t a stranger to the white stuff.
But snowfall was rare enough that anything more than a good dusting was an event.
No school. Snowball fights. Sledding. Snow cream.
My bedroom was adjacent to the kitchen at our house in Summerville.
I often woke up to the sounds and smells of my mother in the kitchen. (How priceless that memory is now!)
Bacon sizzling.
Gospel music on the radio, mama singing along.
She would also listen to the local news and ever so often the report was led by the best news of all.
Snow and lots of it.
School canceled.
Yippee.
I’d jump out of bed and run to my window to get a look at the glorious white stuff.
As I got older, I didn’t even wait for the morning news.
If I knew when I went to bed that snow was likely overnight, somehow I’d wake up repeatedly during the night and get up to check.
There have been few disappointments in life more crushing than to go to bed “assured” of three inches of snow only to wake up to clear skies and dry ground.
My daughter talks lovingly about snow now.
She has little experience with it, but loves the concept.
Like her dad, she has an anarchist streak and snow is, among other things, a great undoer of the established order.
While people in Moose Lips, Mich., may take little notice of a 4-inch snowfall, a similar happening in these parts means chaos.
Glorious chaos.
And then there’s my wife.
She isn’t an anarchist.
She doesn’t like Ron Paul, or undoers of the established order or ... snow.
Last winter I woke up in the middle of the night and got up to get a sip of juice. I looked outside and noticed it was snowing. After watching it fall gently on our yard for a few minutes I went back to bed.
My wife stirred and I said, with the excitement of that 9-year-old boy listening to his mother ’s radio, “It’s snowing pretty good right now.”
“What?” my wife asked.
“It’s snowing,” I repeated.
“&*$%&*#$@&!,” she answered.
I dropped the subject and went back to sleep ... grinning.
Maybe it is still Christmas season.


Jimmy Espy is editor of dalton magazine.