Snow Days

We’ve had a couple of snow days here and there. Last week, we had a day off from school plus a delay, and Saturday the snow started to fall around nine in the morning and didn’t stop all day.

Snow days are always a nice pause. I wondered if I’d think that when I went back to work, and I do. It’s a nice time to hang out. I love teaching. Everyday I’m in front of class I feel like saying, “Hey there, Ol’ Callie.  Nice to see  you again.” But last week, I was reminded that it’s quite fun having nothing to do but be with Hadley and Harper.

We did some art projects.

I played around, too.  A few years ago I wrote down a line from Mad Men that has haunted me ever since I heard it. One of the characters on the show got a short story published in The New Yorker (I think that was the magazine), and the last line of his story went like this: “Making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear.” What a great way to live, I thought. So I wrote it down and put it on a bulletin board above my desk, and I think that’s what I try to do when I write.

We did some sledding.

The girls set up “PE stations” in the living room.

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. Staying at home also provides plenty of opportunities for epic fights.  Like once, the girls had an all out brawl over how one spells “poop.”  Harper insisted one spells it with an “e,” and wouldn’t listen to Hadley when she tried to explain that this would make the word, “pope,” giving whatever it is one was trying to say an entirely different meaning.

There was also a fight about this person.

It started like this: Hadley said, “I think this pilot is a woman because of the breast.” (Note the singularity. We’ve moved from Superbuns to breast which is an improvement, I guess. Note also that I do nothing to correct Hadley. I’m not good at the anatomy part of motherhood.)

So Harper comes over to observe the pilot with the breast and says, “Oh yeah, that’s a woman, alright.”

Hadley, who never ever turns down a chance to argue with her sister, sees an opportunity.  “Well, Harper, it could be a man.”

“What? How could that be a man? Look at the breast!”

“Well, what you are looking at could be a man with a really strong chest.”

And in less than five seconds Harper is screaming and crying, “NO HADLEY IT’S A WOMAN! WOMEN CAN BE PILOTS, TOO! I KNOW IT’S A WOMAN BECAUSE THERE’S A BREAST ON HER!”

Luckily, that was the day of the snow delay, and I got to shuffle them off to school before anyone threw punches.

I finished my little picture and sent it off to my friend, Jill. “I think the reason we write,” I told her in a note, “is because we are startled by the ordinary things in our lives.  I think we write about them in order to bear them.”