"Snow-n'out-Ma!"

And man, is it ever! I just got back from my morning dog walk, and the snow accumulating on the sidewalks was up to Ilsa’s chest. The deep going required us to move to the street, where we walked in the tire tracks of a few cabs and a police cruiser. Ilsa bounded about like she had just been sprung from the joint; she loves the white stuff, and there’s plenty around to woo.

Only a few intrepid souls had ventured outside to share our excite- ment over this wind-whipped deluge of tiny flakes. It appears most of Hell’s Kitchen has opted to stay indoors and wait this one out. Wimps!

Snow transforms the bleakest cityscape into something spotless and serene. The many disparate thoughts of the city’s residents merge into communal awestruck wonder over the power that’s creating such pristine, and temporary, beauty. When it’s snowing out, everyone lives in the moment. Forget about that board meeting next week. Deal with that “C” on your child’s report card later. The unpaid bills can wait one more day. Just look at what’s going on outside. Nature, not known for her subtlety, again compels us to ponder the Big Questions: Do you believe in God? If so, have you made room for Him in your life?

Leave it to snow to rekindle memories you hadn’t thought about since, well, the last good snowfall. The crunching under your boots recalls afternoons of adrenalin-fueled sleigh riding, pulling your sled home with numbed hands and, once inside, seeing spots before your eyes from all of that blinding whiteness. On snow days you never wanted to grow up. School was closed and you could make yourself twenty bucks in a day shoveling driveways with a friend; that was more than what a newspaper route delivered in a week. With that much money you could buy a chocolate egg cream at the Goodie Shoppe, a model, paint and glue at Tervo's Hobby Shop and the latest Sgt. Rock comic book at Stanley's, and still be set for life.

Today’s New York Post says we should expect 20 inches and 50-mph winds before all is said and done for this blizzard later in the afternoon. That’s 5.5 inches short of the 24-hour record amount that fell in Central Park on December 26, 1947, but still an impressive showing. Then the cold air will be charged with the scrape of snow shovels and the whir of snow-removal machinery as layered-up New Yorkers work to make the walkways and roads safely negotiable. In another day the vast, white blanket will be marred with the soot of industry. Day-to-day living will have re-commanded our focus. Innocence will again have taken a back seat to experience. And, for most of us, the big questions, if remembered at all, will no longer seem so big.