Last week’s winter storm brought ice to our part of Northern Virginia.  We awoke to a translucent landscape.   It took me back to a time in my Atlanta childhood when I had little first-hand experience with snow, at least any that I could remember.  My parents would wax nostalgic about family fun in the snow  when I was a baby in Lexington,  Kentucky.  They seemed surprised that I carried no tender memories of making a snowman with Daddy when I was a year old.  I grew up feeling sorely snow-deprived.  Every once in a while, snow might be predicted, but typically, what we got instead, in Atlanta, was ice. 

The current Virginia weather prompted me to rummage through a shoe box of 1970s photos at my mother’s house. I was searching for a particular picture of me and two friends. It had been taken in our back yard on a day when school had been canceled due to a winter weather event, whether snow or ice, I couldn’t recall. But I remembered that the three of us had that characteristically awkward, disheveled, waif-like look of most ten to twelve year olds from that era.

I found the photo quickly.  It was a rare snow picture.  On the back I’d printed: First snow, Atlanta, 1971.  While it obviously wasn’t the city’s first-ever snow, it apparently  was mine, in that location.  We’d moved to the neighborhood only three years before.  My old green and red swing set is visible at back left, long before it became an arbor for wisteria vines.   I’d forgotten that that our yard had been such a wide open expanse in those early years.  By the time we sold the house, in 2017, trees, shrubs and foliage had grown up dramatically, creating the look of a sheltered, enclosed garden. The corner of the garage, at back right, hadn’t been visible like that for many years, nor had the homes on the street behind. 

The details of that winter day in 1971 are hazy.  Seems like we wandered around and gaped, in awe, at the alien snow-covered landscape.  We weren’t well-equipped for actual snow play.  Cold, wet feet and hands prevented us from staying out very long.   My husband is amused at how ill-dressed we were for the circumstances, in corduroys or jeans, and sneakers.  This was Atlanta, not Rochester, I remind him.  Few, if any of my friends had snow boots or ski wear; we would have outgrown them before they were ever needed.  Winter in Atlanta was less a season than an exotic, fleetingly ephemeral sensation.   

My memories of Atlanta ice storms are more distinctly fixed in my memory than the snow days.  Growing up, I considered any form of frozen precipitation a welcome break from the usual.  Ice, snow’s cousin, was our more frequent visitor, and I found its effects fascinating.  As I roamed the icy yard last week, I saw it again with the eyes of a much younger me. 

I loved how frozen droplets, their motion captured mid-air, dangled from dogwood branches.  I saw, with wonder, that every individual privet leaf had been perfectly encased in ice.  Each leaf was twinned with its own ice copy that could be carefully removed.  Amazing!

I enjoyed hearing and feeling  the ice-clad blades of grass crunch beneath my feet as I walked. 

I liked how the light filtering through ice-covered branches gave the sky a lavender tinge.  

Suddenly, I was brought back to the present by a sharp sound resembling a gunshot.  The birds at the feeder vanished in a whoosh, and pine boughs came crashing down.  The temperature was rising, and the sleet had turned to rain, but the pines all around our house were bending lower and lower with the extra water weight.  The power went out.  There were more gunshot-like sounds. I could see cars slowing down out front, avoiding a couple of newly downed limbs.  

We were fortunate in having only minimal damage to trees from last week’s ice.  This week’s winter storm is just now beginning.  Small snowflakes are starting to fall.  Accumulation of three to six inches is predicted for the metro DC area.  The ten-year old me from 1971 would be ecstatic (and far better prepared, in terms of apparel.)

Wherever you are, may winter wow you with its beauty, rather than its destructive power.