Accumulation

It’s a snow day!!! Three exclamation points can hardly express my jubilation at the prospect of an unexpected day off! Oh, there were rumors and there were whisperings among the students of Brentwood High, but no one even imagined such a wonderful winter wonderland would come to fruition (or accumulation)!

I’ll admit that half an inch is a rather meager amount of icy wonderfulness, but I think I’ll speak for my fellow pupils enslaved by the desk and the bell that any amount of frozen ice particles that get our chief communications director Carol Birdsong to call is enough for me! Oh sweet Carol, your mellifluous voice declaring school is not in is like balm for the blistering mind of the weary pre-midterms brain! May the poets sing of the lovely Carol freeing us from the bondage of Algebra and Double Replacement Reactions for eons to come!

Anyway, a snow day is a welcome respite for any student floundering in the vast ocean of review packets, essay questions, and textbook passages that seem to accumulate higher and faster than the snow on the ground during the last lap before winter break. Not that I’ll be spending the day in unrestrained slumber (like I would if it was a preplanned break). No, a day off of school really means a day to get as much homework done as possible in a desperate attempt to claw my way out of the quicksand of deadlines threatening to drown me.

But the great thing about snow days is that I can work at my own pace! I can desperately scribble down the last entries in my composition book for English and finish my stoichiometric reaction worksheet for Chemistry. I can finally have time to print out my review questions for US History and start looking up Ancient Sumerian relief sculptures for Art History.

In short, I finally have time to be a good student who gets things in before deadline rather than a mediocre one who barely pastes everything together to turn in the second before the clock strikes late. When I don’t have to rush out the door by 6:30, I can read a whole chapter of the bible instead. I can finish my homework by 10 in the morning, and go till noon making cookies for friends and family. I can then spend my afternoon making my Christmas gifts and writing thank you cards and still have time left to watch a documentary on wolves and write a post for my blog, and the amazing thing is I can do it all in my cozy red snowman pajamas.

I have a day of freedom to work and to play, to do learning, a thing I love, in peace, quiet, and independence. I can write freely and with joy undiluted because I can be myself without the mask of uncertainty and insecurity that often creeps across my face when I’m at school. I haven’t written for my blog in an entire month because I had no day of freedom to enjoy such luxuries as time.My entire soul feels as if it has been freed, if just for a day, to live and to be myself. Even though I could have slept in today till noon, I got up at 6:30 when my dad came and told me the wonderful news because I wanted to experience every drop of this wonderful freedom, to savor and enjoy it like a fine meal.

I want relish in these wonderful days of liberation because I know my time for them is very short. I am sixteen now. In only a short year and a half I will be eighteen. My time to revel in the snow and be a child are quickly evaporating before my very eyes and each minute that passes is a minute I cannot get back.

I don’t want to live my life asleep, be it a metaphorical slumber or a physical one. I don’t want to have a single day wasted. Even though I will have to go back to school tomorrow, I want to make that experience one I can be proud of. If I look back on this day, today, I want to know that everything I did was for the Glory of God and the happiness of others.

I want to be the best student, the best daughter, the best friend each and every day I live, snow day or otherwise. I want to love boundlessly and live sacrificially, like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, who Ms. Gwen taught us about last Saturday morning as an example of such virtues.

Time is short and the years melt away like the snow in the Tennessee sun. If today were the last day of my life, then I’d make it wonderful.