More song lyrics, relevant

“Sleigh Ride”

1948
Composer Leroy Anderson
Lyricist Mitchell Parish

Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy and cozy are we
We’re snuggled up together like two birds of a feather would be
Let’s take the road before us and sing a chorus or two
Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you

I thought about this song a few days ago while out on a walk with my grandson. You see, he was just having his first realization of “Snow Day.” Meaning, no school. A heavy snow had fallen and then a light rain, then a temperature drop. All this meant that the school district cancelled classes—thus, his nursery school followed suit. His sense of time and what it means has been getting more and more honed. The other day he said you know what today is? I said Wednesday. And he said, Winter. He’s beginning to understand the seasons, the divisions of time, how the day and seasons break down, what these sections are called.

Out on a walk to do errands we went to a few shops. I noticed how rosy his cheeks were. His blue hunter’s cap, green puffy coast, snow galoshes all make him look like the little boy in A Christmas Story 

But, the rosy cheeks reminded me of “Sleigh Ride.”

Comfy and cozy are we. I knew that after we got home and out of our layers of clothes, we would make hot chocolate and sit around looking at books or watching TV. We’d have a regular off-day.

Let’s take the road before us and sing a chorus or two. We carefully navigated the snow-packed side road in our neighborhood. The salt trucks hadn’t been down yet. There were tire tracks and a few bare spots. We walked in those narrow ruts. Every few feet he’d reach down for a mitten-full of snow to eat.

There’s a happy feeling
Nothing in the world can buy
When they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie
***
These wonderful things are the things
We remember all through our lives!

Somehow, I believe this is us. We’d had a few near catastrophes already that day ranging from baking cookies (and forgetting or having to substitute ingredients), slipping on ice (it’s getting impossible to actually clear the deck), to trying to find a Christmas card list (Where are the stamps we just bought!? We looked everywhere—nada). It seems it was one step forward, two steps back—that this walk was actually the sweet spot in a hectic day, to a hectic season: Winter. This is the part we’ll remember all through our lives—the shushing, the white snow, Grandma’s cookies (whatever we want to call them) out of the oven. Snow day memories.