During 72 hours of Arctic cold, Aaron and his family hunker down, rediscovering the magic of snow days through games, creativity, and a bread-making obsession. What they find is a discovery of something many of us know but have forgotten...
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Unlock the power of storytelling in just one hour with Aaron Calafato. Gain actionable insights and tools to transform how you connect and communicate—in work, life, and beyond.
7 Minute Stories Credits:
Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke & autopolitan
Listen Free: | Apple Podcasts | Pandora | Spotify |
Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke
TRANSCRIPT
Aaron Calafato:
I discovered something in my house that I always knew was there, but sometimes I forget. And it took 72 hours of subzero temperatures for me to find this. And I'll tell you what it is right after the music.
All right, let me set the stage for you. All of this takes place in my house, and we’re all stuck. My wife, my three kids, we’re all trapped. The school cancellations said it all: school is canceled for the kids because of the frigid, bitter temperatures. And if you read the rest of the note, they let you know what’s going to happen if you walk outside: you’ll die.
It’s not just, “Oh, there’s a lot of snow out there. Don’t slip, get your shovels out, don’t forget the salt.” No, we’re past that. They said exposure of your hands to the cold literally results in frostbite, death. If you can picture this now, everyone in town is preparing for it. Stores are packed. People are clearing the shelves.
They’re doing what we call hunkering down—oh, I love that word. “Get ready to hunker down.” Very Midwestern. So we hunkered down, stocked up with enough groceries to last us a year. Because you don’t know how long it’s going to last. We’ve got lake-effect snow, and the temperatures change just like that around here. So we were prepared.
I remember winters like this as a kid. And I’m not just mythologizing—it really was colder and longer. No, I didn’t walk uphill five miles in the snow, but we did have frigid winters in Northeast Ohio, for weeks at a time. I remember my grandmother had to come to watch us. They transported her into the house to babysit because at some point, my mom had to go back to work.
My relationship with my grandmother grew so much stronger. It was like we lived a lifetime in those couple of weeks. And as a kid? Are you kidding me? For kids, the snow days and weather event days—let them go on forever.
This memory is helping me discover—or rediscover—a secret that I once knew, that kids know. It’s why they love snow days and weather events. It’s not just the surface stuff—because school sucks sometimes, and you don’t want to get up early. It’s not just that. It’s something deeper that they know and I know, but I often forget.
So here we are now, 2025, and we’re trapped. It affects you psychologically. I mean, remember COVID? We got real creative. I remember some of the games we played with the kids. At one point, we made up this game where we had to walk from one part of the house to another, wearing baseball caps.
We’d talk in old-timey movie accents, saying things like, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and, “Let’s go to the store.” The goal of the game was to flip our caps in the air so they landed back on our heads as we reached the destination. And if we did that, we’d win. It took three to four hours. It gave us a purpose, a mission, and we weren’t going to give up.
This time, though, it was my wife, Cori, who took it to a whole new level. She became a baker. We have a friend, Molly, who sometimes brings over loaves of bread she bakes at home. And that inspired Cori. She said, “Let’s buy a bread maker ahead of these three days. I think I want to try making bread.”
So, $70 later, the bread maker arrived. I’m not kidding you—there are 15 loaves of bread upstairs above my studio right now. I can smell all of it. Sweet bread, Italian bread, French bread, cinnamon bread. Warm bread, fresh out of the oven, sliced with olive oil and butter. It keeps us warm as the air gets colder outside.
This bread-making—it’s incredible. It’s a spiritual experience. I live in a bakery now, and my wife is the baker. How could we ever go back to buying bread?
It’s the same reason kids love snow days. There are universes in the simple act of being alive. And sometimes, you need the outside world to become smaller—more restrictive—so that the inside world of curiosity, discovery, and experimentation gets bigger. And sometimes, you end up with some of the greatest-tasting bread you could ever imagine.
I’m looking at the thermometer right now. It looks like we’re in for a warm day tomorrow: 20 degrees. Almost feels like shorts weather.
Stay warm and stay safe. I’ll talk to you next week.
