As I sit here and look out my kitchen windows I see how the branches of trees are reaching to the ground with the weight of the recent foot and a half plus of snow that Mother Nature dumped on us (she's sitting on a white-colored sand beach with a Pina Colada in her hand, snickering right now).
While the beauty of the scenery is spread out before me, I can't help but reminisce about my early childhood in Vermont. I was born during a blizzard and playing in the snow was part of my daily routine. It was nothing for my mother to bundle up my brother and I with enough layers of clothing that caused us to walk like Frankenstein but with certainty that her children were warm enough to withstand the harsh cold of Vermont.
I remember sledding down Hilltop Avenue on my wooden-slatted Radio Flyer sled and then of course the silver metal saucers and the heavy metal toboggans that of course were death sleds if you went up a jump and leaned to the wrong side. But I lived to tell about those death-defying rides which back then, simply evoked peals of laughter and a lot of chapped lips.
Of course, I didn't have to shovel any of it when I was younger but now, as an adult, I find myself looking at the snow with one eye closed and tyring to ascertain how much Tylenol I will need to alleviate the back pain incurred from shoveling all the snow (as I am doing right at this moment).
There is something wondrous about snow - especially when one has children with whom to enjoy that wonder. Snowmen with varying sizes of bodies, vegetable adornments and of course, the illustrious hat. Spray painting snow with food coloring. Snowball fights and forts. I remember not caring how much snow was on the ground but about playing in it, with it and how many things I could make with it.
While I balk at going outside because I do not like to be cold (and unfortunately, the Coumadin I take makes me a good candidate for an extra freezer because I am cold all the time), my son delights in newly fallen snow and I see myself in him - the way I used to be when I was his age - and his cajoling breaks me down and I end up outside with him and find myself enjoying the simple things that make him happy.
We are collecting a few spray bottles right now to take outside which will hold various colors of food coloring to pretend we are Picasso or Michaelangelo.
The snowbanks and snow-covered bark may not be the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel but for my son, they are places that he express his own creativity and be a kid.
And that's what matters most to me.
Of course, the hot chocolate and whipped cream that will follow our journey out into the winter wonderland will be an enticement back in all unto itself.
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