I LOVED WINTER WHEN I WAS A CHILD
by
Marilyn Bueckert

I woke up, excited, as I could sense somehow that winter was here! The leaves had been flying about for days and it was fun kicking them up as I walked to school. When the gusts of wind hit, we would stick out our arms and pretend we were trying to fly into the wind, sometimes jumping into the air, hoping somehow that the wind might move our bodies just long enough to feel the sensation of flying.

Mum had dug out my winter clothes and my favorite snowsuit was there. It had high bib pants that kept me dry, when I wore them over my zip up boots and a nice warm green jacket. I always picked the red mitts because it made me feel like I could bring Christmas a little bit faster.

I jumped out of bed, shivering in my long white flannel nightie. I got mum to make it for me as if I had one, I could be one of the angels in the Christmas concert. I didn't tell her I could be one of the kids building a snowman as I really really wanted to be an angel.

When I pushed back the curtains, my heart leapt in delight! Snow was falling, and falling in huge, beautiful snowflakes that were covering the ground already. I rushed out to tell mum the news but she knew. Porridge was cooking and hot chocolate so I would be warm playing outside. I had forgotten it was Saturday!

Quickly I pulled out my old sleigh with its big metal red runners. There wasn't enough snow yet to slide down the two foot hill across the road, but I wanted to be ready. I ran around trying to make snowballs and knew the snow was wet enough that I could soon make a snowman.

We couldn't roll the snowman from snow on the lawns though because we always had a game of fox and geese. If we walked across the lawn, the trail we stomped in for the game would be wrecked. Some of my friends arrived and we all had fun, building Fox and Geese and then playing until Johnny got excited and ran across the game. It made him "out" but it also meant we had to wait for more snow to fix the trails.

By the next day, we had almost three feet of snow on the ground. Dad told me I had to help shovel the sidewalks but to make sure I put all the snow in one place. I wondered why but it never did much good to ask Dad. He would tell us when he wanted and all the begging and pleading wouldn't do a bit of good.

When Dad had a huge pile of snow ready, he lightly misted it with water. It was pretty cold so we went in to have some hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. When we went back out, Dad started digging a hole into one side of the dome shaped pile. Soon, I realized what he was doing! He was making an igloo! In the north, they are made quite differently but our snow was not the right consistency for cutting blocks. Besides, we didn't have a husky that knew exactly where the right snow was and stop there.

For the rest of the day, we had fun playing at living in an igloo and it was fun having a window from where we could peek at people going by on the street.

That night, as I lay in bed, I thought about all the other fun things I would do that winter. We would go sleigh riding, skate on puddles that had frozen where construction across the other road had left huge holes. We could catch snowflakes on our tongues, and best of all, Mum would take us downtown to look at the magical animated Christmas windows at Woodward's, then we'd go up to the enchanted world of Toyland. Ah, yes, I loved winter when I was a child.