CULTIVATING A LOVE AND APPRECIATION OF SNOW

How to change a hatred of snow into a love for snow?

Hating messy dirty street snowfalls, hating the shoveling and all the manual labor, hating to fill up a snow-blower with gasoline, hating to fill up a car's gas tank with gas so it will not freeze up in frigid weather temperatures.

Being in a blizzard and hating it, wiping the snowflakes off your jacket like its dandruff, needing boots with thicker tread that stops a fall before it happens, to buy boots that wear higher up to your knees because the snow is deeper than ever outside. Having to bring a change of shoes to wear when you take off your boots because otherwise you would feel to warm.

Hating the slushiness of the snow as you walk in it, wetting your ankles and seeping through holes in your boots. Avoiding pools of water that form with the ice, like icebergs floating that you must jump over to avoid.

Where's the love? The love of snow that you had when you were first exposed to snow as a playful child? How can we transform our hatred of snow into a love for snow?

Soft white snowflakes coming down and catching them on the tip of our tongues whetting our mouths with its moistness, coolness as it is like a cold soda pop.

Building a fort in your backyard with your kids, forming a snowman out of 3 huge boulders of snow that you roll out like bread dough. Sticking a carrot stick into the snowman's nose and using bits of charcoal for his mouth and eyes. Shaking a snowman's hand as it is made of a stick and a glove, feeling like you have a friend in him. Showing him off to passers by on the streets.

Getting down on all fours and waving your arms in the snow to make a snow angel image, brushing the snow with your arms to form the wings. Enjoying its briskness and packing it down tightly.

Formulating a snowball and tossing it like a baseball, playing like a kid throwing snowballs in a battle, each ball obliterating upon contact after being thrown and meeting its target. Snowballs like cotton candy, tasteful with a lick like eating a frozen fruit slush. Ice cubes in your Coca Cola like snow cubes that are frosty and tasty.

Time to change a hatred of snow into a love of snow. Time to remember the good times and forget the bad. Time to always enjoy it all and never to let a bad experience taint your enjoyment of a natural phenomenon.

Going back indoors and cooking hot chocolate and guzzling it down to warm your throat, holding the heated mug in your cold hands, drinking chocolate sweetness that nurtures you like a baby's warm bottle of milk, tenderly and lovingly the drink slides down into a yearning tummy.

Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow!