Ice is ice, no matter which road it covers. Even my friend from Canada knows this. She’s lived in Alabama for a decade or more, but she still crept over the mountain with the other commuters recently, glad to make it home safely, ice crunching beneath her tires.

She may have to do it again. The weather forecasters say we’ll have one more snow and ice event, since It’s still winter, after all. If we do, and we have to get out and drive in it, show us some mercy, people of the north. Don’t blame. Don’t shame. We’re doing the best we can.

And that includes those who live just barely north, over the state line in Tennessee. There’s something called the “snow belt”and we’re on the bottom while they’re on the top.

If you’re below the belt, you don’t get to practice your snow-driving skills if you even have any. Once your wheels spin on the road, you start slip slidin’ away. A police sergeant told me we should remember those things we learned when we first got our license—the basics.

If you have to slow down on an icy road, pump the brakes, don’t slam them. If you lose control, turn the wheel in the direction of the slide and hope you come to rest against an object. Your car can be repaired. Or towed.

Mainly, she said, just stay home. If you have an inch, don’t take a mile. More may be coming. How much bread and milk do you need? How desperate are you for dog food?

But sometimes you have to go out in it. People who work in hospitals have to go. People who are First Responders have to go. Sometimes the snow doesn’t even start until you’re already out there. Then what do you do?

“Stay calm,” Sergeant says. “See that overpass? Don’t take it. See that car driving too fast? Don’t do that.”

Sometimes it’s hard to stay calm. In a sudden North Carolina snow storm, where the gray sky turned white in a matter of minutes, I spun in a circle like a metal top, my Toyota station wagon clipping the side of the car in the next lane. I mouthed “Sorry!” to the driver as my car collided with his. We were both towed home, but nobody was hurt.

It’s hard to stay calm when you’re in labor, and the snow coats the roads like a white net. But my husband and I got to our destination, breaking all the snow driving rules about not speeding, and my son was born in a hospital, not in that same Toyota.

In the south, we don’t have snow plows because we don’t have Armageddon snows. But we often have people willing to help each other, drive older folks home in four-wheelers if they have them, and go back to check on others.

In the south, everything shuts down in a snow event except for grocery stores, bars, and Home Depot. We can eat, drink, and buy a chainsaw to cut up firewood in case the power goes out and the temperature drops.

We’re rarely snowed in for long, but it’s not just the children who look skyward and hope for more flakes, more sledding, more chili on the stove and another day home from work or school. Some of us would take this over a snow plow any day.

Down here in the south, we know that no matter how icy, cold, and snowy it is, how scary to drive, it will be 70 degrees again in a couple of days. We’re never in it for the long haul. Let’s enjoy it while we can. No shame or blame in that.