I wasn’t allowed to start it. But that never stopped me from riding. My legs weren’t long enough yet to straddle the seat. I folded them underneath me, which also offered the height I needed to reach the handle bars. Bundled with at least two pairs of snow pants, I couldn’t feel the snow that had collected on the heels of my boots. If I knew the words for throttle and brake, I didn’t understand them. I squeezed both frantically at the same time with a woolened tenderness. The faux fur that encircled my face prevented me from seeing Norton’s house, but as the anchor to Van Dyke Road, I always knew it was there. The two strings that secured my hat, were balled in the same fur, and tucked inside my coat’s collar. I could feel them vibrate as I made the whirring sound for speed in the motionless snow.
I don’t know how long I spent on the Ski-doo. Perhaps it wasn’t even as long as it took to bundle. Winter outings at 5 years old rarely were. I mention it as a reminder. Glenda the good witch in the Wizard of Oz was right, “You’ve always had the power, my Dear…” I tell myself this as I set out for the day. I smile and hear the whir from within. Today is beginning — Let’s ride!!!
There must have been more of it then — the snow. I remember garage doors avalanched. Gravel buried. Yards that melded one into the other on Van Dyke Road. (Aaaaah, the great white equalizer.) And maybe it was youth, or inexperience, or lessons yet unlearned, but I don’t remember ever feeling that we wouldn’t come out from under. Even as abandoned snowmen clung to life beside Spring’s marigolds, I believed in the warmth ahead.
Perhaps it’s the reasoning for all the lights. On trees and mantles. Candles lit and windows outlined with blinks of eternal hope. I suppose we do everything to keep the warmth alive. We highlight memories. Not to relive the winter, but to point our way to summer’s embrace. To prove to our hearts, and mostly our minds (the heart is always the easier sell) that we can overcome. We can survive. And will. And WILL.
It’s ironic — this urgency to rush the winter, when it all really goes so fast. To slow it down, I remember the boots tipped over on radiators. Scarves half frozen from breathless gasps captured in the cold. And I think, what haven’t I survived? What haven’t we survived? And I gather in the light — warmed in the “out from under” — and I am saved.
A fresh snow was a gift on Van Dyke Road, if you were 6 years old and needed to make something. We learned pretty early that rolling your ball of snow in last week’s, lasts month’s falling, was never a good idea. You picked up everything left behind in the yard. Gravel spread by the plow. Dead grass. Trash from a tipped can or a note for parents thrown from the school bus. But a fresh snow…this was clean, pure…a blank canvas, a brand new start. You could roll that small ball into one bigger and bigger. You could make a snowman. A family of snow people. You could roll that snow, only picking up more clean snow. You were reinvented. Born. Saved!
We have to stop telling ourselves the same stories – the stories that we don’t want to hear, the stories that we don’t want to be true. The stories we don’t want to be our stories. Even the simplest ones. Things like “I’m a bad sleeper,” or “I’m always late,”. “ I can’t cook.” I’m nothing special.” “I’m not worthy.” We roll these words over and over in our minds and they pick up more negative thoughts until they become too big to even push around and we just become them. I have been guilty of this. Sure. We all have. But I want more for myself. I want more for you! We can do this. We’ve already learned it. We can learn it again. Daily. We can be the fresh snow. For ourselves. For each other. Each day we can offer ourselves that pure and possible fresh start. Give ourselves that open canvas. Be the new story. We can be born. We can be saved.
I was 18 when I had my appendix removed. My first year of college. Not really a kid anymore. Not really a grown-up yet. Everything was white in the room. It was icey cold.
I had felt this before. Lying in the layer of fresh snow. No separation of earth and sky – only this blinding white. Fearing I too would disappear, I flapped my arms and legs to become the angel I needed. But how would I get up, I wondered. Without ruining it — this beautiful angel in the snow. If I rolled over to hands and knees, it would be gone. Just another wreckage in the snow. I laid still. The minutes seemed like hours, but then I saw her. My mom. In the corner of my eye. She ran out the front door, not taking time to button her coat. Still in street shoes, she hopped through the snow to my angel feet. Reach her arms to grab onto my wings and pulled me straight up. No angel damage. She had done it before. She would do it again and again. She looked at the perfect angel in the snow and smiled. I looked at the perfect angel next to me, and grabbed her hand.
I was just coming out of anesthesia when the nurse asked me, “Is your mom here?” I hadn’t yet opened my eyes, but I knew she was, or would be soon. Her coat flapping in the white, crisp air. I rested still in my angel.
The memory of snow.If you are from Minnesota, you will have a memory of snow. Many. I remember bundling. These were not days of Polar fleece. No slim down jackets and pants. No these were days ofbundling. You put on all that you had to keep you warm, and then started to layer with your sibling’s larger clothes, until you almost couldn’t move. You bundled until the sweat started forming on the back of your neck, and the thoughts began to disappear of what you were going to do when you actually got out there.
A fresh snow could mean any sort of building. A fort. A man. Balls. On this day, I began rolling. The bundling made it hard to bend, so I made it bigger and bigger. Big enough that I stood upright to roll. And I rolled. And I rolled. My snowball was huge. It was the largest ever seen on Van Dyke Road. I kept rolling. The Norton girls would be so jealous.I rolled. My brother might notice me. Maybe even talk to me. I rolled. My mittens were wet. My hair was sweaty and freezing under my stocking cap. I rolled. It stood nearly as tall as my ten years. I rolled. Pushed. Grunted. The front yard was almost cleared. Brown grass caught a rare glimpse of the sun. And I rolled. Until I couldn’t. Until there was no snow left to pick up. Until I could push no more.
And there it was. The largest snowball I had ever seen. It was beautiful. White, bright snowball. I loved it. The kids talked about it on the school bus. Neighbors gave the thumbs up as they passed by. It was as large as the rock at the end of my grandparents’ driveway. It marked our house. Our winter. Our youth. My mom took my picture with it that day. And again in March. It was still there. And in June. Still there. Getting smaller, but still reached the top of my hand. The marigolds were coming up in the row that lined the driveway. And it was still there. I posed in front of the orange and gold flowers, in my orange and gold pants set, with one hand on the remaining snowball.
I had built something that lasted. Beyond the norm. Beyond its season. People throughout history have been doing it. In clay, and marble. Building their stories. Without our stories, we are nothing. So we carve, and forge and build and write and paint to tell our stories. To place them at the edge of a town’s road and say, we were here, we are here. Here is the viking-sized evidence of our lives.
