S’nothing like a snow day

It was never going to snow in Johannesburg. I knew this because nothing kills the possibility of snow quite like half the city staring out the window waiting for it to fall.    

There are certain immutable laws of the universe. A watched pot never boils. The queue you‘re standing in is always the slowest. The lane you leave immediately starts moving. And if millions of Johannesburg residents spend three days refreshing weather apps and forwarding satellite images from “a friend whose cousin knows Simon Gear”, the snow simply isn’t going to arrive. 

For a brief, glorious moment, however, Johannesburg lost its collective mind. And the excitement made me think about something else.  

What if it had? What would we have done? Would we have looked out of the office window, smiled, taken a photograph for Instagram, and then gone back to our spreadsheet? 

Or would we have done something completely irrational? Phoned the school and said, “The children won’t be in this afternoon. We’re going chasing snow.” Would you have cancelled the meeting, packed a flask of coffee, thrown everyone into the car, and driven south until the grass turned white? 

Because that’s the sort of thing children remember. 

They remember madness. They remember getting home from school to find the suitcases already packed. They remember ice cream in winter. They remember taking the long way home because somebody spotted giraffes. They remember the day the grown-ups unexpectedly stopped behaving like grown-ups. 

It sometimes feels that adulthood is simply the gradual replacement of spontaneity with calendar invitations. When everything has to be scheduled. We’ve become frighteningly good at protecting routine. School attendance. Gym sessions. Meetings. Homework. Swimming lessons. Soccer practice. Another birthday party at Bounce, where all the adults pretend they’re having fun while secretly checking how much battery is left on their phones. 

Judaism, interestingly, has never been entirely comfortable with uninterrupted routine. Our calendar keeps barging into ordinary life, demanding that we stop what we’re doing and build a sukkah. Stay up late. Dress up. Eat matzah. Dance with Torah scrolls. Ask questions. Cancel ordinary life for something extraordinary. 

Our festivals remind us that memories matter more than momentum, that life isn’t measured only by the days that run according to plan. It’s measured by the days that don’t. 

Maybe that’s why the possibility of snow captivated us. It wasn’t really about frozen water falling from the sky. Rather, it was about permission to abandon the ordinary, to be slightly irresponsible, to create the kind of day that gets retold for the next 30 years. 

“Remember when dad took us out of school because it snowed?” 

Except, of course, it didn’t. Which raises an even more important question. Why are we waiting for snow? Why does something extraordinary have to happen before we allow ourselves to do something extraordinary? 

Why not leave work early one afternoon just to watch the sunset? Why not take the grandchildren on a completely unnecessary road trip? Why not decide that today is the day everyone eats dessert before lunch? 

Children don’t need perfect parents. They need stories. They need moments that become family folklore. They won’t remember whether you insisted they never miss a day of school, but they will remember that one Wednesday when you packed everyone into the car, chased the snow, got hopelessly lost, drank terrible coffee from a garage somewhere near Harrismith, and laughed all the way home. 

And if there wasn’t actually any snow? Even better. Because the best family stories have never depended on the destination. Only on somebody deciding that today was worth remembering. 

One day your children won’t remember what you did for a living. But they’ll remember the day you chased the snow.