I read an interesting news article last night about the “culture clash” of southern and northern responses to the snow bogging everything down. Emails from our kids/grandkids in South Carolina bear it out, even though they moved there from the “driven east” (New Jersey).

Down south, people have just parked their cars or never gone out in them, shut down their businesses, stayed home with their kids (because school is shut down for days, too)–and are having a blast! But in the north, a lot more people are complaining and clamoring about public services, or government, or both, not working fast and well enough to keep those roads cleared.

Of course, the snow is a great novelty down south. Some folks are experiencing it for the first time in their lives. And the East Coast up north has gotten hammered already, and people there are weary of trudging through the mess. Novelty has become annoyance.

It’s a little like our cats, less than a year old, who party wildly whenever a few flakes fall and today are going bonkers with delight. Next year, my husband says, they’ll be familiar with it, and it won’t be such a big deal anymore.

Ah, to be children at heart, to respond again like children–southern children, experiencing snow and snowballs and sledding, and even shoveling, as a wonder and novelty and delight.

(As for me, today: I’m just loving the white stuff outside! And thanking God I still have some of that childlike appreciation–for at least until the month of March–or, well, maybe February…)