Snow is like a Rorschach test.
Some look at it – snow itself, and forecasts of it – and it brings them joy.
To be sure, snow falling is pretty and fallen snow can be fun, with snowball fights and sledding and making snow cream.
Others – and if you’re in the first group, you may call them curmudgeons -- find snow not so much fun.
“I hate winter!” said one co-worker first thing Monday morning as he brushed some of the snow that was still falling outside with ferocity off the lapel of his winter jacket.
I know what he means.
On the other end of the spectrum, my sister texted me Sunday night expressing her disappointment with the relatively light accumulation of snow in our area, which saw far less of it than points further north.
I didn’t share her disappointment.
Children looking at a snowflake-like inkblot might likely see days without school, sledding sessions, hot chocolate and, provided the power remains on, hours of television or video games or whatever other activity they can find to occupy the hours they aren’t spending in the classroom.
Teachers likely see interrupted lesson plans, lost work, make-up days, hassles.
Those concerns would largely mirror those of most other working adults, folks for whom a good old-fashioned snow day isn’t a leisurely stroll through a Thomas Kinkade come to life but more of a touch-and-go drive to work.
As I write this, we’re in the middle of what, for us in this part of the world, is an early snowfall.
It’s also a heavy one and a persistent one.
When I woke up Monday morning, the first thing I did – and it required no thought because my brain, even while I slept, remained in winter weather mode – snatched back the curtains to see nature’s progress.
Late Saturday and early Sunday had gifted us with a blanket of snow, but that had been followed up with mostly rain, best I could tell, the remainder of Sunday.
What the snatching back of the curtain revealed was that the blanket of snow from the day before had melted.
I rejoiced.
Half an hour later, I was on the road to Siler City and as the road shortened as my drive furthered, road conditions were again worsening.
This early snow was a gift that wasn’t finished giving.
By the time I’d made it into the downtown district, gone was the rain that had taken the snows place and back was the snow that was falling steadily and quickly on everything underneath it, including my co-worker’s lapel.
This, too, shall pass, as we’re reminded of everything in life.
For those of you who love snow, I’m glad you got an early peak at it.
For the rest of us, isn’t it a wonderful thing that snow melts?