Snow Falling on Horsham

We woke this morning to the unmistakable hush of snowfall.  It's not something I have experienced in a long time but it's impossible to forget that peculiar stillness the air takes on when snow begins to fall.  And this was proper snow; something I have seen only two or three times in the past six years, and only this once at the optimum moment--a lazy weekend morning.

Waking to snow on a weekday was always a followed by a feeling of dread, as the thought of digging out your car and driving to work while sharing the highway with 120,000 other commuters--half of them creeping along at ten miles an hours and the other half screeching past in SUVs because driving a big, heavy vehicle means you are not subject to the laws of physics--begins to coalesce in your brain.  But snow on a weekend, when you have nothing pressing to do, was generally a welcome event.

Today was no different.  Despite it being April, the snow was greeted with glee by nearly everyone.  Before we had even finished breakfast the children in our block were out in the forecourt making snowmen.  (Or are we legally required to call them snowpersons these days?)

These were Indian children (children from India, not Native Americans; you people in the US, keep up) who had never seen snow before.  I can be sure of this because many of them were born here and the others came as toddlers with parents who wore parkas in May because it was so cold; these are not people intimately acquainted with sub-freezing temperatures.  And yet, as soon as a respectable accumulation built up, parents and children alike began making snowmen.  (Actually, they looked more like big-piles-of-white-stuff-men, but I doubt they've had a lot of opportunity to practice.)

I can only conclude from this that human DNA contains a snowman gene, passed down from our distant past, when our ancestors dug their way out of their caves as the snow piled up around them, to answer the irrepressible urge to stack oversized snowballs on top of each other until they represented something vaguely symbolizing a human figure.  Why did they do this?  Was it to appease the snow-gods, or was the man who made the most aesthetically pleasing snowman allowed his pick of the choicest child-bearing females?  Is this how the snowman gene originated and passed into our genetic make-up?

It must have been something like that.  Even in NY, where snow was anything but an anomaly, the first few snowfalls of the year were bound to entice at least a few families out of their warm homes to make snowmen on the front lawn.  (After that, everyone just grumbled about the cold, complained about the snow ploughs and hunkered down to wait for spring.)

As for me, I felt a bit torn.  On the one hand, it was ever so pretty and I had never had the opportunity to see Horsham covered with snow.  On the other hand, it was April for chrissake!!!  Still, knowing it would be melted by noon, my wife and I bundled up in what warm clothes we could find and headed out into the blizzard (hey, we make the best use of what weather we've got).

The snow was quite deep by now (okay, it was just over an inch, but that's deep for here) and coming down so thick I had to shield my eyes and squint through the flurries in order to see our High Street looking like a movie set for a low-budget remake of 'A Christmas Carol.'  En route to the park we encountered the requisite teenagers wearing short sleeved shirts because (and I know this from personal experience) when you're sixteen you're too cool to feel the cold, a handful of couples walking in the snow with umbrellas and a few older teens having a snowball fight (the snowball-fight gene is also part of the human DNA but it's easy to see where that came from: "Ugh!  What this?  We make weapons!")

The park looked like a fairyland, or, more precisely, a fairyland inhabited by short, rotund creatures and their servants: young parents and eager children who patted their pudgy white bodies with great affection, drew faces for them, fashioned arms out of twigs and even, in some cases, dressed them in scarves and hats.  This was the snowman gene in full vigor, energetically embraced by people who see little enough snow to make it special, yet have enough experience to not make a hash of it.

Snow falling on Horsham

We didn't stay long.  The snow continued to fall, spring remained resolutely in hiding and our own, respective survival genes were beginning to kick in: the Tea and Hot Cocoa genes.

I'll let you guess whose was whose.