It snowed today in Colorado, a wonderful eight inches or so, and I didn't have to go to work. I will work the rest of the week, but today was wonderful--no rushing out the door, but actually having the time to shovel the sidewalks and enjoy hot coffee several times before and after the shoveling.
Winter’s cold settles into Missouri, where I grew
up, in late autumn and doesn’t offer many warm, sunny days until spring. It isn’t like Colorado, where I’ve
lived most of my adult life, where t-shirts and shorts show up even in
January. The sun hides often during
Missouri winters, the snow stays around for a long time and freezes to hard and
dirty ridges that are hard to walk or drive over. On the other hand, big winter storms in Missouri can fill
the sky with white goose feathers, moist and beautiful. They are so ready to make drivers’
nightmares of hills, but also create marvelously slick runs for those wooden
sleds with metal runners, like my own childhood’s Flexible Flyer.
Before I moved to the city, before I was twelve, I
lived in a small town of about 800 people. All my relatives were near—grandparents, aunts and
uncles—ready to give me, my cousins, and friends happy times. One of the happiest and most
adventurous experiences came on snowy days, when some one of the adults would
tie our sleds to a car and take us flying around town on the snow-packed
streets. Remember, on a snowy day
in a little town years ago there would have been little traffic. Even if we had met another car, they
would have watched out for us. We
were safe back there behind the car and loving every fling around the
corners. It was especially
exciting when we hooked up two sleds to the bumper and had the added challenge
of avoiding collisions. Sometimes
our bodies slid off the sleds and careened over slippery roads, up onto
curbs. The driver would finally
notice we were gone, probably by our screams to stop, stop. We would
get up, brush off, reposition the sleds, and move right on.
This special sledding only happened in the beginning
of the snowy days. After that,
even the few vehicles driving would wear off enough snow so that the sled
wouldn’t always glide, but would hit bare spots that tore up the runners. The sledding also happened late
afternoons, because we were usually in school, so really didn’t get ready until
after four. It was getting dark by
about five. We had an hour of pure adrenalin-charged fun until we had to call
it quits.
We arrived back home, peeled off frozen, sopping wet
clothes, and drank hot chocolate while we screamed and giggled remembering the
curves, bumps, and near disasters. Our skin warmed and we waited for supper.
