Write on: A chance of snow

I named my first snowman “Mr. Snow.”

He had twiggy arms, orange earplugs for eyes and wore Mardi Gras beads around his neck. He took an hour to make, as my boyfriend, Adam, and I packed icy clumps of snow together and decorated him with whatever Adam had in his backpack.

He wasn’t the most impressive snowman—we later learning we should’ve rolled the snow, not packed it—but we were pretty proud of him. We beamed at our finished product and paraded around him, taking pictures. When we left, my parting words to him were, “I will remember you forever, Mr. Snow.”

I feel like this sounds like a story I should’ve told decades ago, as a gleeful child who just experienced her first snowfall. But this happened last month, when as a full-grown adult, I had my first snow day.

I had a secret wish when I moved to Baton Rouge: I wanted it to snow.

Each year when the first 30-degree temps would roll around, I’d ask my coworkers to tell me about their experiences with snow, always asking them hopefully, “Do you think it’ll snow again this year?”

It might sound like a strange thing to wish for when moving to a state in the Deep South. But I’d only seen flurries once in my life before this year, during a family trip to California when I was 19. It was June, and as we drove up the mountains of Yosemite, tiny snowflakes floated down on our car.

It was a beautiful way to see Yosemite, but it was a pretty unceremonial snow experience. I didn’t get to make a snowman or have a snowball fight. And I definitely didn’t get to make a snow angel, which had been my dream snow activity since I was around 6.

Growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida, snow felt like something that only happened in movies or books, never real life. The last time it snowed where I’m from, Jimmy Carter was president, gas cost 62 cents a gallon, and I hadn’t been born yet.

So when I woke up early on Dec. 8, 2017, to the winter wonderland outside my window, so many of my childhood dreams came alive.

I got dressed and ready to go out in record speed, and stepped outside into the cold. White flakes fluttered around my head, and the thin coating of snow on the ground gave a satisfying crunch as I stepped in it with my rain boots.

I walked from my apartment downtown to the State Capitol, savoring every second. The orange leaves of the trees looked so pretty capped in white, and every person I passed stopped to talk to me. A man with his camera burst into song as he skipped by: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” he sang. I could not stop smiling.

Later that afternoon, Adam and I ventured around, ending up at the park where we’d make Mr. Snow.

Eventually, we felt like we were going to get frostbite in our fingers and decided it was time to go home and drink hot chocolate. But before we left, there was one more thing I needed to do: make a snow angel. I gingerly lay down, a little afraid to sink too deep in the snow and risk getting even colder. I waved my arms and legs up and down, back and forth, and stood back up. My imprint was probably about a foot taller than it would have been when I was 6, but I think I felt just as delighted as I would’ve back then.

I have always loved the holiday season. It’s the one time of year I try to channel what it felt like to be a kid, in awe of the magical world around you.

But each year, no matter how many hot chocolates I drink, how elaborately I decorate my apartment or how many Christmas songs I queue up on Spotify, I can never seem to recapture the exact special feeling looking at Christmas lights gave me when I was 6.

But for one day, when snow fell down from the sky in Baton Rouge, I finally felt like a kid on Christmas morning again.

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of 225 Magazine.