Snow Day

Have I told you this story before? Feel free to skip it if it is a repeat. This time of year coupled with the string of snow days reminded about this story and I wanted to make sure I put it down.


In January 2007, I was massively pregnant with William. I was huge. I was swollen and heavy. Everyone was tiptoeing around me as if I might pop at any moment. My coworkers in particular doted upon me and were relentless in their urging me to take care of myself, sit down more, take a nap, eat more fiber, drink more water, take some vitamins and put my feet up. At the time, I found this incredibly irritating (now I find it kind beyond measure, lest you decide I am an ungrateful fool). They were so kind and caring and I just couldn't wrap my head around the whole thing. I just wanted to me - mostly normal and not the center of attention for the bizarre behavior of my pregnant body.

One day, 1-2 weeks before my due date, it started to snow. It was snowing heavily and the forecast predicted a lot of snow to fall overnight. I don't remember the exact totals, but it was going to be significant for this area (read: more than 0.5 inches accumulation. Most snow melts on contact or within 24 hours).

School was either released a little early or on time. I can't remember exactly. What I do remember is a parade of people sticking their heads in my room as the day was ending to ensure I WAS LEAVING RIGHT AWAY. I was well known that I typically stayed very late to get myself organized for the next day.*


I kid you not, at least 10-12 adults**, including people from different floors
of the building***, stopped by my room for less than 1 minute on a crazy busy day to make sure I was planning on leaving immediately. I agreed to leave early to get them out of my hair, but totally intended to stay. Because I am me. I will do it my way.

Dismissal happened. Suddenly my doorway was full of people. Several people knew me well enough to know that I was not going to alter my ways because of a little snow. They were going to walk me to my car.

I laughed it off and gathered my stuff, but I was a little bent out of shape because this wasn't my first choice.

They walked me to my car and one of them nonchalantly grabbed my elbow when we exited into the parking lot. Anyone else would have gotten an earful, but I let it slide.

I opened my car door and heard my department chair tell me to hop in and start the engine. He didn't want me to be cold.

I laughed at him and reminded him that I was from Minnesota. A little snow wasn't going to hurt me. I fully intended to clean off my car myself.

He used his teacher voice and told me to sit down and start the car- he would not allow me to brush the snow off my car.

I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the special education teacher on our floor start to scrape away the snow on my back window.

I started my car and my department chair scraped the rest of my windows while I sat inside the warmness fuming. I was so mad, I wanted to cry. Suddenly, I was holding back tears. Big, fat pregnancy hormonal tears threatened to blur my vision. I felt humiliated and stupid sitting in my car. There wasn't any reason I needed special treatment. I was perfectly capable of scraping my own car and walking in the parking lot. Or deciding when to leave work for that matter. I would not cry. I would not add salt to this wounded pride of mine and let them see me cry. I sat in my car and bit my lip to hold the tears in.

My car was clean and I was instructed to go straight home and stay there by my coworker. I swallowed the lump in my throat and agreed to go home. I also told him in a wobbly voice I could scrape my own windows.

This made him laugh out loud.

Of course I COULD he told me. But why should I do it if I didn't have to?

Then he turned on his heel and went to help another teacher finish cleaning off the car of the teacher undergoing cancer treatments.

I drove part of the way home half sniffling and feeling sorry for myself. On a whim, I pulled into the hardware store on the way home. I walked in and selected a paint color for my baby's nursery and picked up some brushes.

With a smile on my face, I marched back out to my car with the paint can in hand. I got satisfaction out of slightly defying my orders to go straight home and carrying my own bucket of paint. When I got back to my car, a small amount of snow had accumulated on the front window. I reached for my scraper/brush and found it was missing. Somehow, it was taken out of the car and didn't get put back in. I had to start the car, use the wipers and wait for the defrost to heat things up a little.

At that moment, I had to laugh at myself. I had sat in my car for the biggest pout in history over not being allowed to scrape my own windows. I felt sorry for myself and wasn't thankful for the act of service given to me. The reality of the situation was I could not have scraped the windows if I had wanted to because I was totally unprepared. Likely if I had left work late, I would have had to wrestle with the belly in order to climb the wheel wells to reach the windows of the SUV I was driving at the time. Although they gave my pride and independent streak a big dent, my dear friends got me home safe and dry. The next week when school resumed, I apologized and thanked each person in my group of friends.

My favorite response was, "do you have any idea how scared I was telling you to get back in the car? You are one terrifying pregnant chick."

I took that as a huge compliment.


*teaching labs all day and monitoring behavior of 13-14 year olds leaves zero time for grading, lesson planning, cleaning up materials, entering grades, documenting student work, contacting parents, preparing lab materials and creating activities. In hindsight, I rarely managed my time well, but there wasn't really a way to accomplish all of the other stuff for my job during the day without sacrificing the type of classroom I wanted to run.

**the 8th graders were totally apathetic to my situation. They didn't not care one fig about how I was getting home or how I was feeling or how much water I drank in a day. They were wonderfully self absorbed in their sneakers and music, which was how I wished everyone would behave.

*** this is totally a big deal. As a teacher, I only had 25 minutes to eat my lunch, make copies, use the restroom during lunch. There were people in this building I worked with for 4 years and never learned their names because they were on a different floor.


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