“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…”
Who would have thought it? When I went to bed Christmas Eve night (visions of sugarplums dancing, of course), my mind was on the excitement to come the next morning. Christmas with a 3-year old is a wonderful experience.
Imagine my surprise when Greg woke Sutton and I up Saturday morning with these words, “You need to go look outside.”
We ran to the window and saw a world of white. Everything was covered with snow and it was more than just the normal dusting of white that we Southerners seem to consider a blizzard. This was inches of snow and, because so few people were out and about on Christmas morning, the streets and driveways remained pristine.
It was beautiful.
After checking out Santa’s offerings and enjoying a leisurely breakfast, we all donned our cold-weather clothes and headed outside to take a walk in our own winter wonderland.
And that’s when I remembered something. I hate snow. I live in Alabama for several reasons, one of the main being I prefer to deal with only the snow globe variety of snow. You know, contained to a small area, pretty to look at but not really changing anything about my normal routine.
Still, I was determined to put on a brave snow face for Sutton. We threw snow balls. We made a snowman. I even collapsed next to her as we made snow angels.
Then, in true Southern Bell fashion, she looked at me and said, “It’s cold and I don’t like this. Let’s go inside.”
That’s my flip-flop girl.
While the snow was pretty and didn’t hamper many plans that day, the real impact was felt overnight and the next day. Some of the snow melted and refroze on the roads and made our Christmas trip to Birmingham impossible. We were stuck inside and, when the power flickered off that morning, our mood dimmed.
Gone were the thoughts of a winter wonderland. They’d been replaced by thoughts of 1993 when a blizzard trapped me in a cold Birmingham apartment for three days with only frozen pizza for food and an FM radio attached to a car battery for information.
Things didn’t get that bad, of course. We were “trapped” for only one day and all the Christmas celebrations were easily rescheduled. As for me, however, you can keep your white Christmas. A plain ol’ Southern green one is fine for me.