Snow Day

by Billy Coffey

  In short, she wouldn’t understand my point of view, which meant I would have to go along with hers. Besides, I had promised the kids earlier that we would go outside when I got back from the store. And though I was sadly ignorant of many of the rules of fatherhood, I knew rule number one: don’t let your kids down. Carry out your promises. All of them. Always.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess you’re right. Besides, if you stay in here much longer dressed like that, you’re gonna hyperventilate.”

  “I don’t wanna hyverbengalate,” she said. “That sounds bad.”

  “I don’t want you to, either, and it is bad,” I said. “Let me get my coat and my boots. You go get your brother.”

  She didn’t have to. Just then Josh bounded into the living room, ran into the edge of the entranceway, and fell onto his back. I would have been alarmed if he weren’t wearing even more clothes than his sister. He lay there struggling like a turtle on its back, and I stopped laughing long enough to pick him up.

  “Leff’s go, Daddy!” he said.

  “Is that you in there, Josh?” I asked, peering deep into the hood that was draped over his head.

  “Yeff,” he said through shirt and scarf and coat.

  “Okay then, let’s head out.”

  A chorus of yays followed us out the door and onto the porch. The sun was shining brighter, and already the sound of melting snow was tinkling through the downspouts. There was a good eleven inches on the ground, but it wouldn’t stay there long. The kids must have realized this on some level, because they were suddenly determined to enjoy their time outside to the fullest.

  Both launched themselves from the porch and into the fluff like a pair of synchronized divers. They rolled and flipped and laughed and repeated. Sara made a snow angel, then tried to teach her brother. Unfortunately, he had on so many clothes he couldn’t move his arms up and down to form the wings. All he could manage was a bloated T, so he simply sat up and began eating a handful of snow. That must have been a good idea, because Sara then did the same. In conjunction with just about every child at some point since the late 1960s, she did her best Linus impression and said, “Needs sugar.”

  As I stood there watching them, I realized activities for snow seemed instinctual. Snow angels, for one. I didn’t remember ever showing Sara how to make a snow angel. I asked Abby later on, and she didn’t remember showing her, either. I assumed it was part of our DNA, a tiny bit of code that convinced us that it was both good and right to flop down in some snow and start waving our arms and legs. So, too, were snowballs and the throwing thereof. My children didn’t throw dirt or sand. They did throw rocks, but only into the creek and never at anyone else. Snow, however, was somehow different. It wasn’t long until I was under assault by dozens of small misshaped snowballs. And some larger ones, too, once Abby joined us.

  As the kids began a game of Let’s Try to Cover the Front Yard with as Many Footprints as Possible, I decided that it was time to start shoveling some of the snow out of the way. Several of the neighborhood folks had gotten a head start on me, and I didn’t want to be the man who was the last to clear his driveway. It was a guy thing.

  The sounds of snow blowers revving and slicing through their prey echoed through the streets. I was never one for snow blowers, preferring instead a nice shovel and some good old-fashioned muscle. Sara and Josh waded through the snow to help but soon lost interest. Shoveling was boring, they said.

  Snow had always been one of the wider gulfs between grown-ups and children. Adults wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible and so get on with their lives; children wanted to keep it around for as long as possible and so enjoy theirs more.

  I mentioned snow angels and snowballs and snowmen. I left out one other traditional have-to-do in the aftermath of a big snow, and that was sledding. I also left that to my children. There were no hills near our house, therefore if any sledding was to be done, I would have to pull the load. After shoveling our driveway and part of our neighbor’s, the prospect of pulling the kids around the yard by a rope did not sit well.

  So Josh said, “Daddy, let’s sled!”

  “Yeah, let’s sled!” Sara concurred, jumping up from behind the snowman she was building. “I’ll go get it.”

  A few minutes later I was trudging through the snow using a five-foot piece of rope to pull two children in a lime-green plastic sled Abby and I had bought from the Super Mart the winter before. Two kids who weighed a combined sixty pounds and whose clothing weighed at least that. All told, though, I did have it pretty easy. Neither of my children was interested in speed. This was not a race, this was an exposition. And on an exposition, speed and fear must yield to patience and wonder. They wanted to survey the yard, front and back, and not miss a thing.

  So I pulled and watched and listened.

  We began at the toolshed in the backyard, where the sled was kept. Melting snow had caused large icicles to form along the eaves of the roof, and the children were fascinated by their clarity and shape. The three of us stood for a while, talking about how they were formed and how pretty they were. Josh wanted to hold two of them, one for each hand. I made him promise not to try to eat them, and he obliged. But as I reached up to snap two of them off, Sara protested.

  “No, Daddy!”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “You can’t pick them off!” she said.

  “Why?” asked Josh.

  “Yeah, why?” asked me.

  “Because they’re pretty,” Sara said.

  “Well… yes. So?”

  Sara put her hands on her hips, a signal that she was about to lay down some law. “Daddy,” she said, “God put those there for us to look at.” She then pointed to another cluster of icicles along the bottom of the shed. They were smaller and not as thick, but still passable. “He put those there for you to have.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That okay with you, Josh?”

  “Yeff,” he said.

  I bent down and snapped off two of the smaller icicles. Josh, much to my pleasure, accepted them happily. And Sara, much to my pleasure, was satisfied. Her mission was accomplished. The big, pretty icicles were safe. At least until it got a little warmer. But her way made sense. Use only what you need, and don’t disturb the beauty. Ecology 101.

  We then moved on to the birdfeeder. Josh was adamant that the birdfeeder be kept fully stocked throughout the winter months, even though the robins and the finches had moved on to warmer places. I never saw any value in it. About the only birds left in town during winter were crows and blackbirds, and who wanted to feed them?

  “Daddy, get some birdseed,” Josh said.

  “I think there’s enough in there to last a day or two,” I said.

  “It snowed, Daddy. They’ll be hungry.”

  Fine. I walked back into the shed and got a scoop of birdseed. As I screwed the top back on the now-full feeder, Josh scanned the snow for fresh tracks.

  “You know that there aren’t any robins left,” I said.

  “Yeff.”

  “Or finches.”

  “Yeff.”

  “Just crows and blackbirds.”

  “Yeff.”

  “Do we have to feed the crows and blackbirds, Josh?”

  “Yeff.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re still birds, Daddy,” he said, pulling down his coat so I could hear him exactly. “Just like the other ones.”

  Another lesson to file away in my dim mind: blackbirds were as important as robins, and crows were as important as finches. Just as the poor were just as important as the rich, and the common were just as important as the extraordinary. We were all people. The only thing that separated us was our prejudices.

  Next was the centerpiece of our children’s outdoor life. At some point during every trip outside, no matter the time or the temperature, Sara and Josh could be found on the swing set. To them, swinging and sliding were paramount to any enjoyable day. Being deprived of those two things, whether by
fate or parental decree, would inevitably result in some sort of breakdown. Bought on sale two years prior for a little over a hundred dollars, the swing set was bar none their favorite toy. It was creaky and rusted and used, and the slide had been ripped from the side of the swing set by a nasty wind a few months prior. It was a piece of junk, in my opinion.

  “How about we get a new swing set in the spring?” I suggested as I pushed one child and then the other.

  “No!” shouted Sara.

  “No!” echoed Josh.

  “We could get a shiny one,” I suggested. “A new one. One with an extra swing, maybe. And a slide that’s hooked onto it. Maybe even both.”

  The words trickled out of my lips without my knowing, and I shook my head at them as if trying to blow them away before they could reach my children’s ears. How stupid was that? I wondered.

  But at that moment a new swing set became the most important thing in the world, a symbol of defiance in the face of circumstance. Yes, we would have to cut corners. We would have to save our money for the important things. And what would be more important than something that would allow my children to laugh and jump and play? Even if they didn’t know they needed it, I knew I needed it for them.

  “Don’t you like our swing set?” Sara asked.

  “Well, it’s a little worn-out, I think. It’s rusty.”

  “I like the rust,” said Josh. “It looks like the leaves in the fall.”

  “And we don’t need another swing,” said Sara. “There’s only two of us.”

  “I like our slide,” Josh said. “It’s funner now that the wind fixed it.”

  The subject was settled then. There would be no new swing set. I guessed that sometimes new did not equal better, and many times condition does not equal meaning. Just because something was broken down didn’t mean it was worthless, whether it was a swing set or a person. Helen and Charlie had taught me that.

  After a quick swing and a couple of trips down the slide, I grudgingly allowed a visit to the sandbox. Grudgingly, because the sandbox was always the Middle East of our home. Strife there was constant, wars frequent, and control the only objective. Yet while the geopolitical nuances of the real Middle East were difficult to state, the problem in our sandbox could be stated in four words and one comma: Sara built, Josh destroyed.

  Sara would sit on the edge of the sandbox and proceed to construct whatever her heart and head could conjure. Sometimes her imagination would ignite and she would produce a sand castle. Other times it would sputter a bit and she would only manage a simple pile. But Josh didn’t care what she built. He employed no artistic snobbery. Castle or pile, once it reached a certain height, that thing was going to come down. Screams and cries and accusations would follow.

  And then there was the issue of the shovels. There were two shovels in the sandbox, a purple one for Sara and a green one for Josh, both of which Sara always seemed to end up with and neither of which she would give up. Which led to more screams and cries and accusations.

  Once I drew a boundary line in the sand and said that neither could cross into the other’s territory. But like a slightly smaller version of Napoleon, Josh refused to acknowledge the boundary and invaded. Open conflict ensued, which ultimately resulted in the closing of the sandbox for a few days. I briefly entertained the idea of buying another sandbox so each child could have his or her own. But I decided against that, believing then that valuable lessons like respect and generosity and sharing would be left out. The kids had only one sandbox, so they would have to get along.

  And then one day, something happened. Sara finally realized that if she were to share her abundance of shovels, Josh would likely become too preoccupied to demolish whatever she made. An unspoken treaty was agreed upon between them. Peace blossomed due to the result of one person sharing her abundance with another. If only nations could learn to do the same.

  We didn’t stay long at the sandbox. Sand was fine in the summer, they said, but it was winter and there was snow. Sand paled in comparison. Around the corner of the house I pulled. The children, who had yet to stop talking long enough to take a breath, suddenly became shrouded in an almost holy silence. We had stopped at what had become the most mysterious part of the yard.

  I first noticed the holes during the previous summer. I was mowing one Saturday morning, and near the oak tree by the side of the house were two carefully dug holes about two inches wide. Near those two was another, and another. Puzzled, I stooped down and peered inside. Nothing. I then grabbed a tree limb and pushed it into one of the holes. The limb, nearly eight inches long, went in all the way. I had no clue as to what could have made such a thing. It was much too small for gophers, but too large for ants. I decided that the prudent thing was to fill them in. The kids found the holes fascinating and had no qualms about helping me plug them with rocks and sand.

  The next day, the holes were back. Rocks and sand were gone. Suddenly what the kids had once found fascinating was downright exciting. Questions were posed and hypotheses posited. Sara thought they were fairy holes. Josh was convinced that dragons had taken up residence in our yard. He held a minivigil for a few days, but to no avail. “Those dragons must be fast,” he said.

  We filled in the holes again, and again the next day they were clear. I got a little worried that a snake or two might be hiding in one of them. I placed wet sand around the openings, hoping the critter would leave some prints of some kind. The tracks that appeared the next day weren’t from a snake, but they weren’t from any other critter that I could identify, either. At the children’s behest and against my wife’s intuition, I left the holes open.

  Fall came, and I felt sure that whatever was in there wasn’t in there anymore. Still, the children persisted. At least once a day I would find them either outside peering down into the holes or gazing at them from the window. Now the holes were covered by the snow.

  “The holes are gone!” shouted Josh.

  “No,” I said, “they’re just under the snow.”

  “Maybe we should scoop the snow away,” said Sara. “Just in case there are fairies inside. They might want to get out.”

  Josh brought up the possibility of dragons then, and if there were dragons in there, he would much rather they stay in there.

  “I could just dig the whole area up,” I offered. “Then we’d know if there was anything under there or not.”

  But my motion was defeated by two votes. Something might be in there. That was all that mattered. If I dug up the holes, then either they would find out what that something was, or they would find out there wasn’t anything in there at all. Neither option appealed to them. Knowing exactly might spoil the fun.

  I agreed with their philosophy and even encouraged it. The holes were my children’s first sip of the mysterious, and I wanted them to drink deeply. Life is made more beautiful by the unknown. Somehow knowing that we couldn’t ever know it all was comforting.

  The kids bid the holes farewell with solemn awe and we moved on to the creek that ran down the side of our property. The water there flowed straight out of the mountains for most of the year, only occasionally taking a break during the summer months when heat was abundant and rain scarce. It was, of course, another preferred spot for my children, who loved any kind of water so long as it wasn’t in a bathtub. Sara loved to collect the rocks worn smooth by the water flow, and Josh loved the frogs and minnows that hopped and swam and eluded his grasp.

  During July and August, the creek was off-limits. Those were the hottest parts of the year, and as the creek provided the only source of water around, the snakes would arrive to look for a drink and a quick meal. Copperheads and rattlesnakes were few, but still common enough to keep the kids away.

  The snakes were gone by September, though, and Sara and Josh would resume their treks along the water’s edge. Autumn also allowed them to indulge in their favorite activity at the creek. The oak tree would begin dropping acorns, and the kids would take turns dropping them one at a tim
e into the water by the culvert at the road. They would then follow the acorn all the way along the yard to where our property ended. They did this nearly every day, until the evening became too cold and dark.

  The acorns were gone now, too, either buried beneath the snow or tucked away by the squirrels. But the snowfall had knocked quite a few branches from the oak. I watched as Sara and Josh tossed tiny twigs into the water, then alternately ran and walked according to the current. It struck me that such a simple act could produce such a strong reaction. Though I could not see their vessels, I could deduce whether there was trouble or clear sailing simply by observing the children’s body language. Both would tense when their branches became momentarily marooned on a rock or a clump of dead grass. Both would relax when their branches worked free. And both gave screams of victory when finally their branches sailed on past the neighbor’s fence and into the unknown.

  And I realized the heart of their activity. This was not a mere game to them. This act carried some larger meaning. They were being taught a valuable lesson, a small one at the time but one that would become more valuable as the years passed. If a tiny twig in a raging creek could overcome any obstacle to reach its destination, then so could a tiny person in a raging world.

  Thus ended our exposition. I pulled the kids over to the shoveled sidewalk, where they disembarked and joined me on the porch. We all slumped down into rocking chairs. After two and a half hours of pulling and listening, I needed a break. It came when my wife sat down with us. The smell of fresh bread and a smear of flour on her shirt let us know what she had been doing all that time. After a quick check of Sara’s glucose, she fetched the three of us hot chocolate and went inside to watch the dough rise for her rolls.

  The kids and I rocked in silence for a while, each of us lost in his or her own reflections. I realized that I had been granted a wonderful gift, which was the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of children. It was a gift I could unwrap and enjoy every day, if I so desired. But that was the problem. Sometimes that gift simply sat on the shelf, lost in the hectic days or the weary nights. There were plenty of days when I didn’t take those opportunities to know my kids. Yes, I played with them. I tucked them into bed. I read them stories. But rarely did those moments come when I was able to peer into their hearts and know who they truly were.