Not long ago, I spoke to a friend who has lived his whole life in south Florida. He said to me, âIâve never seen snow.â
Mind you, this neighbor isnât in kindergarten. He isnât a junior-high-school boy hoping to get an X-Box for Christmas.
No, this neighbor is about my age. He can tell you stories about whom he was with when man walked on the moon, or what he was doing when Kennedy was assassinated. He can tell you where he was when the Russians launched Sputnik into orbit around the earth.
But ask him to tell you a single story from his life in which snow played even a minor role, and he falls silent.
Because heâs never seen snow. Not ever. Not even once in his life.
My jaw dropped when he told me that. It was as if someone had said, âIâve never tasted an apple,â or âIâve never heard music on the radio.â
And as a kid who was raised in the Chicago area and spent most of my life in a land where you can awaken to snow-blanketed ground at least a third of the year, I couldnât imagine what my life would have been like if snow had never played a part in it.
I would never have sat anxious and excited around the kitchen radio, waiting to hear if my school was one of the many on the list that would shutter its doors for the day, then squealing with glee and slipping my feet into plastic bread bags to keep my toes dry in my galoshes and rushing outside to join friends to build a city of snow forts peopled by an army of snowmen.
Never built an igloo of snow, then sat in it around a little burning can of Sterno to plot the dayâs mischief with my friend Larry and Mickey, the springer spaniel.
Never stood in the yard with a square of black construction paper, capturing hundreds of flakes and studying each to find one that was identical to anotherâand failing.
Never stopped at the German bakery to warm my feet on the long slushy walk to high school and to buy a hot apple slice from the pretty German girl working there.
Never kissed the snowflakes from Mary Jo Hamiltonâs eyelashes.
Never rattled down the toboggan run at the Whealan Pool Forest Preserve, laughter-tears frozen on our cheeks, then gone home for hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows bobbing on the top like tufts of snow.
Never shoveled a square rink of smooth ice on the Des Plaines River with a mob of other boysâsome of them I knew, some of them I didnât â and then picked sides for a hockey game as girls sat laughing or cheering on the mounded striker-board drifts of snow.
Never raced breathless down Indianhead Mountain on a pair of borrowed skis, the powder so deep that the tips of the skis only ruffled the surface, like a pair of gophers frantically burrowing to stay ahead of me.
Never followed the scuffled trail of a flock of pheasants with Dad and brother Bill in that snow-dusted corn field outside of Dwight, Illinois, only to flush dozens of them at the creek, and then filling our bag limit less than fifteen minutes after we left the car.
Never stood in that blinding whiteout and listened to the geese honking directly overhead, hundreds of them no more than a stoneâs throw up, yet as hidden as if they flew behind a curtain.
Never climbed on the roof to clear away the four-foot drift that threatened to collapse the rafters, then spun down the shingles on a plastic saucer to land on the white mountain that now loomed beneath the eaves.
Never went out into the yard with my young daughter Jenny to build the queen-mother of all snowmen â eight feet tall â and then carried Jennie up the stepladder to sit her on the snowmanâs head and snap a picture.
Never stomped a pathway through the drifted oak grove on the ridge behind the house, then spritzed it with water to freeze it firm for the grandkids to race down on the old wooden toboggan.
Never stood on the porch at midnight on Christmas Eve after the family was asleep, watching fat flakes drift down from Heaven, trying to pick out the one single flake among the swarm high in the porchlight that would follow the perfect trajectory to land on my tongue.
Never, never, never â none of it â would have happened if, like my Florida friend, I could tell you today, that âI have never seen snow.â
I suppose his story (or lack of it) isnât unusual in South Florida. Turn off the TV or the Internet in Miami, Naples or Marco Island and youâd be able to live a lifetime without even knowing that snow existed anywhere in the world.
Still, I couldnât help but feel sad when he told me he had never seen snow. Not sad for him, I guess, because he seemed fine with it. He had no memories of an aching back from hacking through the frozen plow-drift at the end of the drive in the morning in order to get to work or the store. He had no memories of slips on the sidewalk or stairway, and an unplanned visit to the emergency room.
Still, I felt sad imagining my life without snow in it â especially the snow of my childhood. Erase those memories and it would be as if I had never really lived my life. At least not the best parts of it.
Some of you may have grandchildren who live in the deep South and have never seen snow. Iâm sure theyâll grow up just fine if the only snow in their lives is the white cotton ruffle around the Christmas tree in the living room.
But please, I beg you, donât let them become old men and women who will one day tell friends, âI have never seen snow.â
Bring them north.
Bundle them up and send them outside.
Donât rest until theyâve tumbled out into the white-wonderful world, flopped onto their backs, and waved their arms and legs into snow angels.
Please. Their life depends on it.
