Snow Angels
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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for the Mount Washington Observatory and today on The Weather Notebook, we hear from commentator Chuck Kruger:

"Looking out the foyer windows of an upstate New York Center for the Elderly one winter morning, an alert staff member spotted a resident flopping about in the new-fallen snow. She grabbed a stretcher and a nurse and rushed to the poor creature's rescue. As they bent over the old gal, whose arms and legs were in a flurry of motion, they took careful note of her apparent agony as they prepared to slide her onto the stretcher. It was then that she, suddenly aware of their presence, opened her eyes, stopped her motions, smiled up at them, and said: 'Can't you see I'm having fun? I'm making a snow-angel.'

That was my mom.

As far back as she could remember, and she was then 84 years young, every winter, come that first serious storm, she'd go out and make angels in the snow. In all innocence, she never thought of informing staff of what she was about to do.

In fact, when she entered the Center, she'd made a resolve not to give up a number of her old habits, such as writing a story from her rich memory lane instead of buying a present every time one of her grandchildren or her great grands celebrated a birthday, or collecting mermaids' tears every time she saw a wave-washed piece of glass along the shore of Owasco Lake, or, flopping down in the virgin snow and creating a snow-angel.

My mom, now perhaps an angel herself and learning to put her wings to practical use."

Chuck Kruger is a writer and storyteller from Cape Clear Island, County Cork, Ireland.