The first _______

Yesterday was the first snowfall for this portion of New York.  That tends to tick off most people.  I hear questions like "why is this so early" and "what happened to fall".  True, fall and spring have become almost non-existent seasons, but you would think that people would be used to stuff like that by now.  And snow in mid-October certainly isn't unheard of.  I remember as a child that trick-or-treating was flat out canceled in my area one Halloween due to a winter storm that left nearly everything in sight covered in roughly half an inch of solid ice.  It was amazing to see even though it was very dangerous.  I don't think I even minded missing out on trick-or-treating that year because I could walk down the street and feel like I was living on Krypton.

Yesterday I took the dog out for her morning potty break before heading to work.  There was maybe an inch of snow stuck to the ground outside and it was still coming down in large, slowly drifting clumps.  It was really beautiful and I took a few minutes to watch, which is certainly preferable to watching the dog do her business.  I wish I could have stayed out longer, but I had places to be.  I started thinking then, and continued to think through the rest of the day, about the firsts in my daughter's life.  There will be the very first snowfall for her, when I imagine she will be staring up at the sky and crinkling up her nose when she gets hit by a particularly large snowflake.  I want to be there for all of those firsts -- first steps, first words, first day of school.  Those are the things I'm looking forward to.  I want to be there to help a new human experience the world for the first time.  I want to watch her go through the process of learning how things work, like the day she figures out that just because the toy went behind daddy's back doesn't mean that it doesn't exist anymore.

I'm looking forward to looking at the world through a fresh pair of eyes.  I'm sure it will help me learn almost as much as she will, and I look forward to having those experiences together.