Snowy Winter
February 6, 2020
Fifth Avenue in McKeesport during the blizzard of 1978.
Photograph courtesy of McKeesport Regional History & Heritage Center
The time of the cold weather is my time. Either during Christmas when I can enjoy the baking of cookies, looking at lights or being around family. My other time is around the winter season just warming up by the fire at my sister’s place or cooling off when I get too hot in the house.
I ask for things that come in packages or bags during the Christmas season. There is one thing that I ask for that can be for Christmas season or just plain winter season and it can’t be in a package or a bag.
The one year that it didn’t come made me wish and beg for something year after year to make it feel like or look like Christmas or winter. I plead, wished and begged Mother Nature to make it look and feel like Christmas or winter.
A lot of people hate it, but I love it, because it’s real and not fake like that store-bought stuff. How I miss building a real snowman; there is a song called Frosty the Snowman: What is a snowman without snow?
How it was fun just to lie in snow and get covered as I made snow angels in the past. I even remember snowball fights and going down the hill in my little yellow snowsuit when I was a kid and as I was growing up. There were magical times too, when snow would cover lights and the lights would make that snow glow as if it was magic snow.
I always hoped I would see a couple of kids doing the same in the future, but I don’t see that anymore. When I go online, I see the northern states or Canada getting all that snow but not us. I get angry and grow jealous more and more, making me wish I had winter powers like Elsa or Jack Frost to bring back the winter weather. I miss it so very much and I feel that people have forgotten the magic of what snow can bring.
I feel that I’m the only person who remembers what snow was like and how much fun I had in it. Snow can bring out the best in people; help shovel snow for our family or neighbors when they need help. Passing out hot meals or giving clothing, blankets and coats to those that need warmth from the cold weather. People even got creative with snow and created snow sculptures, or even wrote one word or even wrote a small message in the snow.
I’m the only person who wants to outside when it snows to catch snowflakes on my tongue and just watch it as it gently falls to the ground. If I could decide between indoor or outdoor for the cold weather, I would decide outdoor and just have fun in the snow once again.
How I miss the snow. How I miss seeing kids having a fun in the snow doing a snowball fight, sledding, building a snowman, and making snow angels. These days, in this time of modern age, I don’t see any one enjoying the snow any more.
The one message that I would say is that the snow brings out the community by playing, helping or caring. There’s always something about the snow that brings out a person we’ve not seen in a long time or not seen before.
I wish people would remember that magic of the snowy weather.