FIRST SNOW SENDS MEMORIES SWIRLING

The first snow of the season was sparse but it was still enough to change the world outside the cabin and paint it mostly white. As I sat in the upstairs loft and drank my morning coffee and looked out the french doors I was immediately transported back in time. Memories sprang forth long buried but not forgotten; a mirage of images from childhood many times relived and revived and embellished through the years turning everything from that era golden and cherished.

As a kid we lived for snow days. No school. No schedule. No early to bed or early to rise. Snow days were fun days and we lived outside from morning till night.

We would drag in exhausted from a day of snowball fights, sledding and building forts. Our faces would be cold and rosy and our gloves would have hunks of ice frozen on them making then hard to pull off. Our toes and our noses would be ice cold but inside our four shirts and heavy coats our little bodies would be warm and sweaty.

Mom would have hot chocolate and toast with lots of butter ready for us and we would unwind scarves knotted at the neck, shed our boots and wet coats at the door and dig in.

With four kids my mom knew how to stretch a dollar. She was an expert at making everything taste good and had a way of making us think everything she made was special.

She would buy ten loaves of bread on special for a dollar at Stumbo’s Grocery and we always had toast with every meal. We didn’t realize at the time it was because the bread was too stale to eat plain, and we didn’t care. Toast with butter was our go-to after a day in the snow and we loved it. We would dip it in our hot chocolate then hurry it to our mouths before it fell apart. We would giggle at each other as we wiped the drips from our chins and planned the next day’s outing in the snow.

The five years age difference between youngest and oldest didn’t matter at snow time. We all played together as equals as only siblings could do.  We laid in a line, biggest to littlest and made snow angels all over the yard. We dressed our snowman. We climbed in and out of our fort. We threw snowballs at the kids down the street. We laughed together and loved together and life in those moments couldn’t have been more perfect. 

I finished my coffee, folded the blanket and put it back on the end of the couch and headed back downstairs with a big smile on my face.

I’m really glad it snowed last night.