Today, le mot juste goes to our friend Nick, who arrived at the cafe in party spirits, announcing, “It’s as if there’s been a truce!”  Just so.  A snow day is like Christmas, only better.  The rules are etched indelibly into our hearts, and even though we may be adults at work when drifts wave like white flags along the trenches of streets and sidewalks, we are loathe to break them.   The day’s mission is understood:  fun, pleasure, mischief.   Like Scrooge we discover it is not too late; through no merit of ours, we have been given a second chance.  Perhaps Secret Snow Santa has plowed our sidewalk or, greatest of pleasures, our very own shoulders lean in to help in some way so ordinary and unremarkable, we really don’t deserve a reward, but there it is anyway, just for us: a cup steaming hotter than our breath, and sweet.  Here is the power of snow:  to burn as it makes you shiver; to make being the target fun; to burst, on contact, into powder and laughter; to level the playing field, for on this day, children rule.  And later, as the snow blushes in afternoon sunlight, and the shadows point farther and farther across the yard, if your fenders are fine, and bones unbroken, there will be no regrets.  Not one.