Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. - Carl Sanburg

Teachers should never, ever say that they choose their profession because of snow days and summer. Never. And I do not wish to sound as if I'm in league with this reprehensible lot.

However, there is so much to be said for snow days.

Snow days are my second favorite kind of day, second only to Christmas Eve in splendor. Summer and spring break and all of these vacationy days fill quickly with family plans and neglected doctor visits. The days pile upon themselves; one day rolls into the next, and soon the vacation itself becomes unpleasantly routine. 

Snow days are perfect because they cannot become routine, and they cannot be planned. I am always prepared to work on such days, awake and usually showered long before I hear the phone ring with news. And then, like glorious petals, the moments unfurl before me. I am, for once, conscious of time, precious time. At all moments of my day, I thrill at the knowledge that I am living the seconds of a gift. The cornmeal wheat pancakes I made for breakfast? A gift. The painting I will finish after lunch? A gift. The fire I sit beside? A gift. Time seems powerful, deep, brimming with meaning and possibility in a way it could not have been if I'd known what it would hold. I run my fingers along its contours, I dip my toes into its oceans. 

Time is a gift, they tell us, a finite set of moments that cannot be stored, only spent.