Snow

My farmer and I have this fun game we like to play where I tell him that living in Missouri is basically the same as living in Mississippi and then he tells me that living in Iowa is the same as living in the tundra, and then we both laugh like we really didn't mean it but we actually do. 

I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one. Case in point: They have sweet tea in this state. That means it's the deep South. 

Common knowledge.

What Missouri doesn't seem to have much of is good old-fashioned snowstorms.  The first winter I lived in St. Louis it snowed several inches. I headed out to church on Sunday morning only to find there was legit no one else on the road, which made me wonder if I was the crazy one or if it was just that everyone else was. 

Don't answer that. 

Growing up in Iowa meant learning to play and work and drive and live in and with a lot of snow. Snow days were the best -- although somewhat rare because snowplow drivers in Iowa don't mess around -- and I distinctly remember one day where the school bus stopped to pick me up, headed to the next house, and then got the call that school was cancelled, turned right around and dropped me back off again. 

It was like Christmas! Except that it was probably, you know, like October or maybe May.

There was also the Halloween blizzard of 1991 (now I sound like an old timer) where trick-or-treating was basically cancelled because feet, not inches, of snow were piling up. (Those of us hardcore enough to go out were rewarded handsomely because we were the few, the proud, the . . . ok, too far.)

But still, some candy AND snow days? Do you see now why Iowa is a child's paradise?

Then there's the infamous story of my sister who, in a rush to get to the bus, lost one of her snow boots in a snow drift on our lane, but didn't want to take the time to go back for it, and ran ahead to the bus anyway in one sock and one boot. I've never asked if she found the other boot. Maybe when the snow finally melted and the ice eventually thawed . . . so basically mid-July. 

My sisters and I spent our childhood winters playing in massive piles of snow, pushed up in mounds by our dad's tractor; sledding down those mountains after diving into a precariously perched sled and shooting out across the driveway; tromping through our grove where the snow was covered in rabbit and raccoon and deer tracks. 

I'm hopeful my kids can have the same experience here in Missouri at least once every ten years, even if the one-year-old is currently at a stage where he can barely move when bundled up and basically just wants to sit in the snow and cry. It'll come. 

Or we'll just have to visit Iowa in the winter more. 

Either way.