When I woke up Thursday morning, I was greeted with what I thought was the rather unfortunate appearance of several inches of snow. I'd been warned at the beginning of the week about its imminent presence but I still hadn't quite prepared myself for the reality. Like many other Notre Dame students, I was immediately unhappy about the thought of the now present, long cold winter.
An hour later, when I finally braved the outdoors, I realized that this was a sort of funny feeling for me to have. I'm from Montana and I've grown up with snow all my life. It's not entirely uncommon for it to snow on Halloween where I'm from and we almost always have at least one snowfall in May. When I was little, I always greeted the first snowfall with excitement, no matter how early it came (my reaction to the late spring snow was, usually, quite different).
I love the winter. Snow makes me think of Christmas, skiing, sledding and hot chocolate. I love all of these things. There's no reason I should dread it that much. As my day went on and I continued to trudge through the snow, I asked myself what it was about this snowfall that made me so unhappy. Was it the fact it was still early-ish in November? Was it the prospect of sitting through the entire Northwestern game in the snow? Was it that I hadn't quite adjusted to the fact that I probably wouldn't be getting a lot of sun until April or May?
I didn't come to a conclusion on that. I'm still not sure. But on my obligatory walk between DeBartolo and Flanner, I decided that I was going to think about all the positive things I know and remember about snow. I love how people from warm places almost always treat their first snowfall with the kind of youthful excitement I usually only see in small children and in my father when Notre Dame wins a particularly exciting game. I love how I now have a consistent excuse to drink tea and hot chocolate because it's almost always cold enough. I love the way snow sticks to my eyelashes and causes everything to look just a bit brighter and whiter.
I've decided I have to hold onto these thoughts. Clearly, it's easy to get bogged down in the negatives of winter but there's a reason I've always actually preferred it to summer. With the first snowfall, I've decided to remind myself of these things — I won't get through this South Bend winter without them.
