Second Snow
The first snowfall of the season is cold and beautiful and fills you with wonder. You run to the grocery store and stock up on bread, milk, and toilet paper and then rush home to enjoy the show. As the fluffy flakes pile up, you might wander outside, taking pictures and making the first tracks in the pristine snow. You try to catch a flake on your tongue. You watch your breath come out as a cloud. You’ve been transported to this amazing new place where everything is covered with a clean blanket.
The second snow is a bit old hat. Been there, done that, and you need to get to work and the person in front of you is driving as if this is the first snowfall all over again but it’s not. This snowfall is just making a mess of things. Your car is crusted in salt and brown slush. You’re cold and wet. Your boots aren’t tied. Your scarf is falling off, trailing behind your back somewhere. You’re wondering how it all got so difficult.
The same is true the first time you see the President’s motorcade in Washington, D.C. I first saw this proceeding decades ago and it still sticks with me. It was summer and I was in the Georgetown neighborhood of D.C. and I was on foot, which made it all the more memorable as even all the sidewalk activity stops moving. You hear the sirens first, more of a police sound than an ambulance, and you know something is headed your way. Traffic starts getting out of the way. Someone on the sidewalk will inevitably say, “Motorcade,” and the word will pass its way down. Motorcycles, police cars, armored vehicles will pass. Then comes SUVs with Secret Service officials staring you down and despite their aviator sunglasses, you know their eyes are on you and you don’t dare move a muscle, not even to take a picture. Finally, the limousines pass, and likely this is where the Beast vehicle would be in today’s lineup. There’s more than one so you don’t know which one, if any, is carrying the President. When the last vehicle has gone, time restarts and everyone, from traffic to pedestrians, starts moving again and you know you’ve just experienced something amazing.
The second time you see it, you might be stuck in traffic having waited through three cycles of a light and just when you could finally get through the intersection, you hear the sirens and start swearing to yourself. The motorcycles, SUVs, and limos pass and you shake your head at them and from the safety of the inside of your car you yell, “Oh, come on!” For more of what it’s really like in Washington, D.C., check out my first book, Upside Down Kingdom.
Anyway, the first time you experience something, be it the motorcade or a seasonal something like snowfall, it’s nothing short of spectacular. You stop and catch your breath. But then the newness (or re-newness) wears off quickly--and there’s a reason for that. When we’re kids we look at the world with wonder and we can’t wait to grow up, i.e., gain knowledge and experience so we can shake off our childlike ways and start to interpret and handle situations as adults. We put ourselves in this position on purpose. Remembering that, we can backtrack a little and absorb these experiences any way we like.
The second snow and even the 402nd snow can be pretty magical. Let them be so.
