Out of Hibernation

3.8.07

I am a self-proclaimed hibernator.  Okay, that’s maybe not an actual word, but you get my drift, right?  I’m with the bears on the subject of winter – no worries, I’ll sleep through the whole thing, thank you very much.  Well, maybe not exactly sleep, but I’ll stay indoors where it’s warm as much as possible.  I have scrap-book pages to put together, email to read, friends to chat with online, and novels to write.  If I never had to set one foot in the snow I surely wouldn’t miss it.  I hate moving it, and I hate driving in it, especially when the hip yahoos in SUV’s fly past on the road as if they could never be derailed by a sneak ice attack.  Suffice to say it’s just not my favorite season.

 

I didn’t always feel this way.  As I child I loved skiing at Chester Bowl, ice skating at Cobb School, and sliding down the hills at Ridgeview Golf Course.  I had a neighbor who, at the end of deer season, would give me the foreleg of a deer.  I spent hours making deer tracks in the snow.  Of course, this was way back when we actually had snow in November.  The good old days… for a child at least.  I walked to school on top of snowbanks piled six feet above the street, and even before Christmas!  The adventures available in the backyard were endless.  I prayed for enough snow toallow me to climb onto the garage roof because I wanted so dearly to jump off of it.

 

I never had to shovel any more than I actually wanted to.  Oh, wait, that part hasn’t actually changed much, ha-ha.  My husband is in charge of any major snow in the driveway, and I when the post office wanted to put a mailbox at the end of the driveway instead of at my front door I happily agreed.  Once in a while I shovel a 2 foot by 3 foot porch.  That’s pretty much it.

 

As a grown up I’ve become a real wimp about snow and cold and winter. 

 

But this year…

 

This year we had a big storm and I have a 3 year old child.

 

That changes everything.  No more hibernation for mom, because there are mountains to explore in the driveway and rolling hills in the backyard.  And a drift behind the shed that reaches darn close to the roof.

 

My daughter never gets cold.  I guess she’s a Northland girl through and through. So this past weekend, the weekend of the “big storm,” I prepared myself to play outside.  I suspect it would have been a crime against childhood not to.  And of course, SHE has snowpants, and SHE has a hat with little flaps that cover her ears, and SHE has stylish purple snow boots.  I have none of these things.  I’m sure I owned snowpants before my pregnancy, but I haven’t seen them since.

 

So I have sweatpants over my jeans.  And I have a headband for my ears that keeps slipping down into my hood, and I have really ugly boots that are a cheap knockoff of Sorrel that are ten years old and not very warm anymore.

 

And yet… I never felt very cold.  Perhaps it was the wonder of seeing winter brand new in the eyes of this joyful child.  Perhaps it was squeals of delight as her nylon-clad body slipped and slid and rolled down a snow mountain, cushioned and cradled at the bottom by soft cold fluff.  As she packed snow into a square box and tipped it over to make a snow castle she said, “It’s just like the beach, Mom!”  I would argue that the beach is better, but I refuse to be a buzz-kill on this magical day.

 

I plopped her on top of the drift behind the shed, where her fingers could nearly reach the roof.  “I’m sitting on my tuffet, Mom!” and she proceeded to recite a nursery rhyme I didn’t even know she knew.  When she got to the end she squealed slid down the drift and laughed and laughed, her merry blue eyes twinkling with delight.

 

“Look Mom, the snow sparkles!” and indeed, in the twilight the snow sparkled like a million diamonds.  There’s a hush on a snowy night that can hardly be described.  “Yes, like fairy dust,” I tell her.

 

If I hibernated, I’d miss all this. Sometimes our children show us how to feel like children again.