my snowy street
As far as I know, this is the last winter vacation from school I’ll ever have. Sure, I might have time off for the holidays in the future. But it will never be quite the same as this. Winter break is more than a pause in the school year; it’s a destination, an attitude, and an excuse. Winter break is my time to decompress and to give thought to all the things I don’t have a moment to consider in the day-to-day routine of doing them. It’s a collapse onto my parents’ couch, where I can remain for hours without any desire to move whatsoever. It’s the allowance to eat chocolate twice a day. And when it snows, as it is right now, I’m snug in the warm house. Every kid loves this feeling, and of all of the ways I’m becoming less of a kid, this is one of the strangest and hardest to wrap my mind around: life without winter breaks.
I know I should be spending this time looking for jobs, but I also have a fierce desire to slip into tremendous nylon snow pants and make angels in the backyard. Going home from school always comes with a feeling of regression to my younger self, but now there’s also the nostalgia I already feel for something soon to disappear. And when the snow falls over the town, and the white fluffy mounds pile up on the roads, everything stops. We remain for hours with no desire to move whatsoever, we’re all on a break. So it feels like the whole town is on pause with me, and if I could hold it all still for just a little bit longer I would. Maybe I would make a snow angel or something.
