Dawn broke last Thursday with signs of impending chaos, though none of us quite knew it yet. The closure notifications arrived like falling dominos: first the school (my children’s sanctuary), then the daycare, then Gov. Ivey herself cast the die with her declaration of emergency across 37 counties, including my own slice of Lee County.
Even my son’s basketball game — that weekend ritual of squeaking shoes and buzzing scoreboards – surrendered to whatever ominous force loomed on the horizon.
The phrase “winter weather advisory” spread across Auburn, where I live. Here we were, an entire city grinding to a halt at the mere suggestion of snow – not a blizzard, mind you, just the possibility that crystallized water might descend from our usually benevolent Southern skies.
It was the kind of meteorological event that would hardly raise an eyebrow in Minnesota or Maine, but in Alabama, it offered a perfect illustration of why those pesky environmentalists quietly retired the term “global warming” in favor of “climate change.”
By mid-morning Thursday, before the sun reached its peak, I found myself swept into the fluorescent-lit drama of the grocery store, pushing a cart with grave determination. I, whose culinary expertise extended no further than the safe territory of outdoor grilling and the occasional breakfast, was suddenly possessed by the urge to stockpile flour and sundry baking supplies: items as foreign to my kitchen as Sanskrit. (The last time I attempted anything resembling real cooking was a dubious pot of spaghetti in 2006, a fact I prefer not to dwell upon).
Publix hummed with a particular kind of Southern dread. Fellow shoppers darted between aisles like anxious birds before a storm, their carts filled with survival essentials and inexplicable impulse purchases. The egg section, nearly barren, beckoned with its scarcity. Despite having no earthly use for eggs, I added them to my collection of unlikely provisions.
Did I mention that my wife was out of town, entrusting me with our small brood to face whatever elements might descend upon us?
The afternoon dissolved into a blur of school pickup lines and scheduled activities: the piano lessons and basketball practices that fill a family’s quotidian life, each minute ticking away until finally, mercifully, six o’clock delivered us all home again.
The pantry groaned under my morning’s purchases, these artifacts of panic-buying that now seemed almost comical in their ambition. Standing there, surrounded by bags of flour and those coveted eggs, I did what any sensible man might: reached for my iPhone and summoned dinner through Uber Eats. After all, I reasoned, studying the sky through our kitchen window, one should save one’s culinary awakening for when the snow actually falls.
Not long after, there was a knock at the door. A polite young man had arrived with our pizza and calzones. Then the family ate and talked.
Later, after tucking the baby into his formula-induced dreams and losing myself in the quiet comfort of a book, I drifted off to sleep, leaving tomorrow’s weather to sort itself out without my supervision. Flour and eggs stood sentinel in the kitchen, awaiting a snow day that might never come.
The baby’s cries pierced my slumber at 11 p.m., a languid hour, drawing me from bed to prepare his bottle. Through the window, only darkness greeted me – no hint of the promised snow. Four hours later, this small domestic drama repeated itself: another cry, another bottle, another woeful glance at empty skies.
By 6:30 a.m. – a luxuriously late hour for me, made possible only by the day’s canceled obligations – I rose to find my elder children pressed against windows, their breath forming fog on the glass as they searched in vain for any sign of white. The morning air held nothing but broken promises of winter weather, though the scent of warming cinnamon rolls offered some consolation for their disappointment. (No, I didn’t “cook” these. I just heated premade ones from the store).
At precisely 7:58 a.m. – though time seems less rigid on such mornings – my daughter’s voice rang through the house with the peculiar pitch of childhood wonder: “It’s snowing!”
We abandoned our various posts and rushed to the front door, an impromptu stampede that sent our cats fleeing in elegant terror. But nature had already finished its modest performance. A few rooftops wore the thinnest possible veil of white, like the dusting of powdered sugar on a New Orleans beignet, yet the sky above hung innocent of any further intentions. My own roof was entirely unaffected.
Modern media, I’ve learned, wait for nothing – certainly not snow. With barely an hour until my scheduled appearance on Newsmax, I quickly transformed my home office into a presentable broadcast studio. The lighting had to be just so, the microphone positioned correctly, the backdrop of books arranged to suggest professorial authority and approachability.
To my children – the older ones, abruptly promoted to temporary guardianship of their baby brother – I delivered instructions with the severity of a general. They listened solemnly as I explained the curious mathematics of television time: how I would vanish into the digital ether of Zoom well before my actual moment in the spotlight. They might have to watch the baby for an hour in my absence.
They did, and the show went fine. But whatever snow had been visible on the rooftops was now gone. It seemed we’d have a snow day with no snow.
While our friends to the north shared their winter wonderland portraits on Facebook – Atlanta’s streets transformed into seasonal postcards, Huntsville draped in white – we sat in our snowless vigil, watching and waiting. My relatives up there had practically become Yankees overnight, documenting their snow-blanketed yards with the smug satisfaction of proudly rude New Yorkers.
The children, increasingly despondent, insisted they hadn’t witnessed a proper snowfall since January 2018. Their sad yearning for winter magic mirrored my own, though probably for different reasons: they dreamed of snowball fights and sledding down hills, while I sought some cosmic validation for this delicate juggling act of broadcast appearances and baby bottles. (One feels rather foolish playing the role of television pundit and homebound parent when the weather refuses to justify such ridiculous multitasking).
By twilight, it was clear that winter had played its little joke on us, offering nothing more than a whisper of snow. Yet there we were, gathered around the warm fireplace, the baby snoozing, the popcorn bowl passing from hand to hand, our faces illuminated by glowing lightsabers flashing across the screen – where the Empire struck back.
Then, alas, it hit me: perhaps the weather’s betrayal had given us something after all – not the dramatic metamorphosis of the landscape we hoped for, nor silly snowmen, but rather this quiet tableau of ordinary contentment, this simple pleasure at our disenchantment endured together – father and children on a plain, unremarkable Friday evening.
Maybe, just maybe, the most precious snowflakes are the ones that never fall.
Allen Mendenhall is Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University and Executive Director of the Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy. Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.
