Myron B. Pitts: Snow in Fayetteville?! Maybe my son will be the good-luck charm
Snow sat on the ground when my son Samuel was born nine years ago this Friday. This was in Winston-Salem; my wife was serving as pastor of a church in Stokes County just north of the city.
In January 2014, just after Sam’s first birthday, Fayetteville had a big and rare snowfall. This was not a light dusting, mind you — this was the kind you could make snowballs with and snow angels in, and we did.
So I can be forgiven for thinking that our firstborn was our good-luck charm when it comes to snow. We even bought a sled before a predicted snow one year.
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What we got instead was a paper-thin layer of white. Good to look at, hardly enough to make a decent-sized snowball. The kids managed to have a blast anyway. We made a tiny snowman — it was about 10 inches tall and memorably, little Helen Ann called it a No Man.
So, we haven’t seen a real snow here since my son turned 1.
Fingers crossed we’ll get a few flakes out of the big winter storm passing through this weekend, although I am not optimistic. I am steeling myself for mainly ice and rain — a hassle to try to drive in, a threat to power lines and utterly unexciting.
Sam and his sister, Helen Ann, are excited at just the prospect of snow, of course. They have chatted happily about it since we had those warnings last week of a snowfall that did not pan out.
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I was the same way when I was their age growing up in these warm sandhills. I remember with joy how a snow day stopped the world, most particularly school, and my brothers and I could just get out and have ourselves a good ol’ time.
Sam naturally does not remember the last big snow here in Fayetteville. He knows it only from pictures.
Our daughter, who is 6, has seen only flurries, including once when we were visiting her grandparents in the Virginia mountains. (Last week, the grands got a winter wonderland of snow — looked like a picture postcard. I almost didn’t show the kids, because whatever falls from the sky here in Fayetteville, we knew we ain't getting that.)
Last week, Sam and Helen Ann were wowed by just the icicles on branches as they peered at them from the kitchen window. Frost even gets their wheels turning.
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Friday they are out of school, and school officials have designated it as an “asynchronous” learning day, i.e. remote learning. We did not have such things on a snow day in the 1980s — this is where technology can be a bummer for our little ones.
Needless to say on the off-chance we do get a real snow, I think we know learning is out the window for that day unless we talk learning about how to make a snow cream.
And if we do mess around and get that snow, thank my good-luck charm son on his birthday when you see him.
Opinion Editor Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Myron B. Pitts: Maybe my son will be a good-luck charm for snow
