Today is a snow day. Snow started falling yesterday afternoon and by 5:30 this morning, the school called to declare a two-hour delay. Two hours later, they called again to cancel. So I slept in. This is my typical response to a snow day, because most days I’m up by 6:00. I like sleep and will find excuses to indulge. The snow’s been lightly falling all day, a soft blanket of beautiful white, decorating bare branches and pines with a fleecy white veil. My last check revealed a total of six inches—and it’s still coming.

Yesterday when the snow started, I was at a doctor’s appointment about twenty-five miles from home. After lunch with my husband, I drove home, noting the blinking highway signs reading, “Caution: White-out conditions.” In the distance, the valley looked fuzzy—a sure sign of snow, rain or other precipitation. Still, I continued on. After all, how bad could it be? Not more than a mile down the road, I encountered the white-out. It was like someone drew a line, and that was where the mayhem started. Blowing snow, decreasing visibility, gusting winds. Fun, fun. In our area, we’ve had multi-car pile-ups on the interstate in similar conditions. At the next exit, I drove to the old mountain road which everyone used before the interstate went in. It’s longer, but the trees block the wind and reduce the blowing snow that make I-80 so dangerous. Instead of a white-out, I faced untreated roads and slush-filled tracks. I followed the twists and turns up the mountain while my traction control engaged and disengaged. I’m blessed I didn’t get stuck. After a quick stop at Dollar General for the requisite milk and water (we already had enough bread), I hurried home.

If I had to do it over again, I’d make the same choice. But it made me remember why I hate driving in snow.

I’ve lived in Pennsylvania my whole life and in this small town for most of it. I’m not sure how I’d handle living in another part of the country where hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes are the norm. Blizzards and heavy snowfall seem easier to handle. Our preparation checklist looks like this:

1. Buy enough gas for a generator, if you own one.
2. Make sure your vehicles have full tanks.
3. Check your pantry for a stash of canned goods.
4. Cancel any appointments that may have been scheduled.
5. Buy milk, bread, and water and “hunker down.”

We’re hunkered down now. I’ll let you know when we get out

As the parents of two munchkins, my husband and I have had to lay down some rules. For example: no electronics in the bedroom, always tell the truth, and homework before fun. When the kids were smaller, we also had “Try one bite of everything on your plate.” (That one still sometimes gets pulled out when I feel adventurous and try a new recipe.) Many of these rules are probably very familiar to parents across the world. But we’ve had to institute a few unusual ones, too. One, a holdover from my childhood, is no singing at the table. I’m still not sure why, but I think the logic behind it is, if you’re singing, you’re not eating. And as a kid, I was a slow eater. Very slow.

Most weeknights, our family comes together to have dinner and share about our day. We’re all encouraged to share one good thing, one bad thing, and one interesting thing. Several years ago, we noticed an unusual trend. During dinner, Munchkin One would quote a memorable movie line that was appropriate to the situation. Munchkin Two would give the expected next line. Before you could take another bite of your mashed potatoes, they’d repeated half of the movie’s script, complete with sound effects. Now, there’s a small part of me that felt a motherly pride with their steel-trap memory, something I lost about ten years ago. But after experiencing the movie line phenomena a few times, we lost something precious. My husband and I would walk away from supper without any clue to how their day went.

At their age, I would come home from school, sit on the yellow stool just inside the kitchen doorway and spill my guts while my mom made supper. I had a few rough years dealing with school bullies, and I needed that verbal dialogue as a kind of decompression. If I was still bothered by a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day, I’d practice my piano lesson and lose myself in the music. But my kids don’t follow in my footsteps. Each of them comes home, does their homework, and then plays video games. So that connection at the dinner table is crucial.

In response, we created, “No movie lines, TV lines, or music lyrics at the table.” Sometimes my husband or I will slip with “Everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?” (from Star Wars IV) or “I don’t know what they taught you in France, but rude and interesting are not the same things.” (from French Kiss.) But my kids store pages and pages of dialogue from all the Pixar movies, Disney movies, and most recently, anime shows. (You know you’ve experienced a rare thing when your English-speaking kids sing a whole song in Japanese.)

So with the no movie line rule, we eliminated the movie play-by-plays, and they shared what happened at school. But sometimes with Munchkin One (now a teen), we hear, “Cause we were like, ‘whooooa,’ and I was like, ‘whooooa.’ and you were like, ‘whooooaaa…’”

As you can see, it’s a work in progress.