Nothing like a snow day
to thaw mom’s heart

Robyn’s Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

Hopefully that storm a couple of Fridays ago will have marked the final snow day for this school year. As a mom who works from home, few things make me happier than when Monday morning rolls around and my kids are at school, my husband is at work and I am at home . . . alone!
Nobody’s dirty dishes are left on the counter, nobody’s fighting over the computer and nobody is around to bother me. I can do whatever I need to do without being "mom, interrupted." My cell phone is turned off, and thanks to the miracle of caller ID, I am able to screen any incoming calls.
I can run to the store and not have to report to anyone as to where I am going or take their order as to what they would like me to purchase while there. I can meet a friend for lunch at a restaurant where you actually get to hold the menu in your hands and not have it illuminated in neon lights on a wall behind the counter. I can go to the video store and pick out what I want to watch that weekend, and rest assured it will not contain the word "Barbie" in the title. Or I can just plain sit at the computer in my pajamas and check my e-mail, inquire about the 87-inch-screen TV I may have already won or crank out a column or two.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I don’t love having my family around. But as we all know, time to oneself is a precious commodity. I can remember when my kids were little and how I’d watch the clock tick in slow motion until my husband came home from work. People always say how hard it is to be a stay-at-home mom; the truth is, it’s not all that difficult, it’s just mind-numbingly boring. How many times can we feign enthusiasm for a kid just for using the potty? How many hours can we log at the McDonald’s playroom without being ticketed for loitering? And how many times can we say "No you can’t have a play date with little Tiffany from down the street, that kid drives me nuts!"?
Now I am happily at the stage of life where my oldest is at college, my middle is in high school and my youngest is (finally) in first grade. But sometimes all this "me time" can come to a screeching halt, as was the case during that storm two Fridays ago. I was merrily going about my day, sans children, when the phone rang. After checking the number, I picked it up only to hear my friend inform me that the schools were letting out early.
"But I just dropped her off."
"I guess the school district wants to make sure all the kids get home safe before the snow begins to pile up."
"But I had plans."
"Me too. Oh well, what are you going to do?"
"But it’s not dangerous out there yet."
"I think you better go pick up your kid."
Since I didn’t want social services showing up at my door, I went and picked up my kid. My middle one — being smart enough by now to know that snow days get mommy really ticked off — wisely went to a friend’s house.
Once home, we made the most of the situation. We lit a fire in the fireplace, popped some popcorn and hunkered down for a long winter’s afternoon. We watched one of those girl-befriends-untamable-horse-yet-manages-to-convince-been-there-done-that-cowboy-father that her purpose in life is to rescue said horse because "after all I’m just like you, daddy." The movie eventually came to the obligatory "horse gets injured and needs to be sent to the glue factory" scene. As the men are leaning over the horse, one says, "Are y’all gonna shoot it?", to which my daughter looked at me and said, "Well that’s only going to make it hurt worse!"
When the movie ended, I suggested to my daughter that we bake some cookies — "bake" being the operative word here, as I don’t actually make cookies, I just slice and heat them. I may not agree with Hillary Clinton on much, but she did receive my full support for her long-ago retort to a pushy reporter who had the gall to ask her why she worked: "I guess I could have just stayed home and baked cookies."
It was after we bit into the fresh, hot-out-of-the-oven, pre-fab cookie that my daughter said, "Mommy, you’ve made this the best afternoon ever."
All right, I guess snow days aren’t so bad after all. But the moment quickly passed when she asked if we could go sledding. It didn’t take long for me to decide there’s a limit to our bonding.
"Daddy will be home soon, honey . . . I hope." ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net