The Nostalgia of Childhood

When I was a girl, I walked up hill in the snow both ways to school—

Oh, wait, no. That’s the wrong cliched illustration.

What I meant to say was this:

When I was a girl, I watched for the Snowbird report on the local news to see our county on the state map with little snowflakes falling. I also listened to our local AM radio station.

TV. Radio. Maps. The icons of my childhood snow days.

Last week, we had two snow days off from school. Not much snow but enough to make the roads slippery.

My kids don’t know who Snowbird is. We get our school closing information on demand from the website, text messaging, Facebook and Twitter chatter, or the automated phone call from the school system.

I feel a little caught between the worlds of progress and nostalgia.

I love, love, love the information age in which we live. I’m an information-gathering girl. God smiled on me when he ordained my living in the 21st century.

But don’t we tend to romanticize the past and rewrite our histories? Maybe I’m just nostalgic for the excitement surrounding the snow day.

No doubt I’d rather be a six-year-old with few cares except performing the right “ritual” of ice in the toilet, spoon under the pillow, and wearing pajamas inside out in order to coax snowfall.

I think I just feel old.

Sometimes I’d like to go back to rotary phones, record players, and a cell-phone free life.

Sometimes I miss simplicity. Not always, but sometimes.