Snow Days: January 7, 2010

Jim stared out the window as the snow fell to the ground in lazy sweeping circles. His cane leaned up against the table as his tea cooled in front of him. Outside kids ran in snowsuits through the drifts in front of his house. Slowly he opened up his morning medication tray, his fingers not being as able as they used to be. Counting out the daily pills he lined them up in front of him and tried to remember what each one was for. Some were for his heart, others to thicken his blood once the heart ones did their work thinning it out. Some raised his cholesterol in an attempt to keep his knees from locking and others brought the cholesterol back down. Some were simply food fillers to make up for whatever they thought he was missing that week.

Sighing he started the daily routine of taking his morning meds. A routine that sometimes seemed to last until it was lunch and time for another round. Whether it took so long because there were so many pills, or because his hands were so slow, or because they truly had figured out how to randomly adjust time, he was never sure.

Halfway through the line of green, white, and yellow that laid in front of him Jim was brought out of his contemplations by the slam of a door from outside. The neighborhood kids had emerged from their safe, warm houses to build forts and a snowball fight had ensued. The kids were laughing and running gleefully around the white blanketed yards. Jim smiled as he recollected his own child hood and his own all-neighborhood snowball fights.

In his day it seemed there were more kinds of snow than he knew words for. There was the packing snow that was so great for snowballs, the fluffy layers that begged to be flopped into for snow angels and devils, the loose film that would fly up from under the sled on a good hill. There was the snow that fell in layers almost like lawn turf that rolled right back up into huge balls for snowmen, women, and families. Jim’s favorite was to make snow dogs running throughout the haphazard families that emerged after a good, thick fall.

On days when it snowed enough to tug the soul, but not enough to cancel class at the local school house he remembered his fathers stories of trudging in drifts 10 times as high, uphill, both ways to his school. And Jim remembered telling the same tales to his own children and grandchildren.

On days when snow shut down the world of adults, when the school house was closed and shops remained dark, Jim would bundle up in everything he owned and run outside, marveling at his good fortune. Unaware of the strain and hassle his parents felt, he raced from house to house picking up friends and allies in the upcoming snow fights. He once built a fort that to this day he swore was taller than his own house.

Jim was halfway through the memory of that fort, could almost feel the crispness of the wind against his cheek as he climbed higher and higher to add levels when a scream pulled him from his memory. Outside a child had lost one of his gloves in the giddiness of play. Through the full helmet, through the protective layers of glass and neoprene covering the child’s head, the scream pierced through Jim’s heart. As the flakes fell on the unprotected skin of the small boy’s hand they burned one by one through the delicate skin. The child ran towards cover, any cover, he could find. A door, maybe his own, maybe a neighbor, opened and admitted the terrified boy. Gave him respite from the deadly acidic snow. But not before Jim saw the welted, red, hand, and what he prayed was not a piece of bone. Jim turned back to his line of medications and slowly began the routine once again of trying to finish his morning pills. And he wondered what tales these children would be able to tell their grandchildren of their own snow days.