Snow Days

I am writing to you all today after two days at home.  Snow days.  My children many years ago wrote a song, "It's gonna be a snow day tomorrow, there's big sky, big flakes.." I can't remember the whole thing, but now every time I prepare for a snow day I think of those days.  Long days, playing in the snow, shoveling the walkway, watching as the driveway was plowed.  We would play games, watch movies, bake..read, relax, nap..

Now I am all alone with these snow days, and I still do the same things!  I read, I relax, I nap in front of the fire, I wait for the snowplow to clean up the snow, I always have a baking project.  I also try to throw a few things out every time there is a snow day.  I usually have a list..dusting, vacuuming, all the things I never have time to do!  But the past two days I had enough time to write for a long time in my journal, and talk to my sister on the phone, and work on my knitting project, a Charles Brocade blanket for my granddaughter's doll.  I played the piano, I worked on my music for an upcoming concert with the symphony in Portland, I continued to read Raised from the Ground, by Jose Saramago.  I threw out some old magazines, I shoveled for hours, I baked to cranberry/blueberry breads.  I got a lot accomplished.

Now I am back at my desk, and it looks like tomorrow is another storm!  Yikes.  I am hoping to get this project with dynamics finished today, in case we miss tomorrow's class, as I then won't see them for two weeks.  The only problem with one week on and one week off is that..

This blog is just about going with the flow, and letting the wind howl around you without being afraid of it.  My quote for my advisory today was, "Look to what you are afraid of to learn where you can grow"- I am afraid of being alone in a scary storm, but I do it now every winter at least a few times.  I am afraid of not being able to get where I need to go..but maybe I am learning not to be afraid to say to whomever, "I cannot get there, the storm is keeping me here."  I may be afraid of losing time with my students, but if I have no control over the weather or what there is to be done about it, I must not be afraid of not being in control.  Just watch how the big trees' limbs would bend in the wind, and not break.

 I am hoping to continue to learn from the bending trees, from what I am afraid of, from time alone.  There is always music, books, a roaring fire, and there is always hope that students will be practicing or playing or listening to music and thinking about it, even when they are not in school.  I believe that if it is important to all of them, they will.

Snow days are days of reflection, days of renewal, days of restoration.  They are days when we can do things we never have time to do, days we can, if nothing else, breathe deeply and then, when the snow has cleared, and the sun is up, we can begin again.  Let us begin again.