December 18 – “Snow Day”

I made it to Snow Day at Cailyn’s school yesterday.  Wait.  This is Galveston – a tropical island paradise, remember?  I guess I should explain.  So it didn’t mean they stayed home because of too much snow.  Doesn’t take much snow for it to be considered “too much” here anyway.  But the last time any snow happened was the Great Christmas Eve Snowstorm way back in ‘04, I think.  That means we are probably good for no snow until at least 2019.  One snow usually lasts us about fifteen years.  Rather it meant that someone paid to have artificial snow created and blown onto the school ground.  The patch they selected was right up next to the school near the building. 

Now, I was assigned the duty of taking Cailyn to school yesterday, but her class wasn’t scheduled to play in it until around 9:00.  As we walked across the street from the parking lot, I saw it right away from my towering five foot nine inch perspective.  Cailyn didn’t.  She lives life a little closer to the ground for the time being, so other objects prevented her from seeing what I saw.  Without thinking of the difference of view points, I said, “Look, Cailyn, at the snow.”  She glanced around on eye level at the grass nearby and quickly corrected me, “No, DadDad.  That’s called frost.  It’s on the grass.”  Ah, yes.  I stood corrected on what she could see.  But I encouraged her to look beyond her visual limitations, and focus a little closer – right up next to the school building.  And the look of awe on her face when she actually spied the snow was priceless.   So was the “Oh, my gosh” comment that followed.  Her eyes grew wider and wider as we approached, and she with a sly grin, she quite politely asked if she could touch it.  Of course I said she could.  And as she picked up a handful and held it out to me, she said with all the wonder and awe she could muster, “It’s like a pile of bunches and bunches of ice and ice.”

Psalms 8:3-4 says, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

Father, give me the eyes of a child to appreciate the wonders you have placed all around me.  Strike me awe-ful and wonder-fully polite.  Amen.