Ice

Usually I love ice - I love it in my water, the fact that it comes so easily at the push of a button from my fridge, whole or crushed - just to my liking.  I love shaved ice & anything generally cold from the freezer that has sugar & ice in it.  I craved icee's with every pregnancy.  So, you'd think that I would find some kind of enjoyment in an ice storm ....

I have lived in some very snowy places - I grew up in Idaho, and lived for several years in UT, a few in a neighborhood that I'm convinced was perfectly placed for horrible snowstorms, even when the rest of the valley seemed untouched that neighborhood always got it bad.  I knew that if I got out of the neighborhood alive during a storm that the rest of the trip would be fine with the salt trucks and snow removal system that SLC was equipped with on the main roads.

Indiana is a different story - and it's not because they don't have the snow removal equipment.  It is definitely here and has an even bigger presence that I ever noticed in Utah.  It is just that it is wet - the snow sticks to everything (roads, tree trunks, windows) and it doesn't melt ... and then these ice storms!  Talk about impossible traveling conditions.  I was at work when the storm hit yesterday and had to drive home, by myself, in the little corolla (which normally I love, but not on ice!).  Between having to chip my way into the car and maneuvering on roads that seemed to have several inches of shaved ice on them, I'm pretty well convinced that ice storms are nothing like snow storms.  I kept thinking as I was gripping the wheel in borderline terror about driving with my dad on snow covered freeway in Idaho as a teen.  I learned a lot on that candy route trip -- I'm sure my mom wasn't pleased with us having to make that drive in that storm, but it is probably one of those moments that allowed my dad to teach me things about driving in bad weather that I never would have learned otherwise. 

As parents there are lots of things that we want to control - pretty much anything and everything that our children touch, eat, breath, learn, play with.  But, I'm finding that sometimes letting go of that control is exactly what we need to do in order to teach our kids - and quite often it has a more profound, impacting effect on our children than if we had tried to reign in control and keep things from happening. 

So, with my children home for yet another day tomorrow, because of a second round of ice storms tonight, I'm going to try to let go of control a little more ... ha, ha!  Maybe let the house get a little more messy, let some things go that I normally want to accomplish and just let the day happen, enjoy them a little more, listen more, play more, maybe learn something together and try to remember that control isn't all it appears to be!