The day
bloomed bright and blue with the winter morning sun streaming in the southeast
window of my aunt's farmhouse bedroom.
Sunrise is late this time of year in the great white north so I hopped
from my bed and found the family downstairs already eating their
breakfast. The previous day’s storm had
stopped and the sun was baking the surface of the snow-pack, simultaneously
thawing and refreezing in the stiff north wind.
When my brother and I dressed in our wool sweaters and cotton dungarees
and went out in mid-morning arctic chill there was a stiff crust on top of
supportable wind-slab. We found an
aluminum toboggan in the barn and headed out towards the lower pasture. ‘Be home for lunch’ is all our mother told
us. We were raised in the permissive Dr.
Spock manner of the early 60’s where we were free and allowed to fail and fall on
our faces.
Without a thought or a care or even
a short test run, we piled on the toboggan and headed down a long steep untrammeled
hill towards the lowest corner of the pasture.
We immediately found ourselves accelerating on this frictionless plane
and our initial joy swiftly turned to horror as we realized that we were
completely out of control and continuing to accelerate at an exponential rate[1]. We rolled over a few undulations but
naturally found the fall line that led to the lowest point on the property and
began screaming for our lives. We
started punching and pulling comically on each other, for lack of anything
better to do, but we knew we were doomed.
The sled flew over a short wall
and we were airborne for several minutes before crashing down into the snow
without the sled. We rounded the last
corner sliding on top of the crusty snow as the sled crashed into the lower
fence and bent into a perfect ninety-degree angle. We continued rolling on down a thin slew cut
into the woods that allowed the horses to access the stream channel below in the
summer. ‘Stream Channel’ we thought in
the back of our little minds, ‘oh poop’.
We piled down the hill and into the icy stream, feet first, and came to
a reclining stop in the cold water.
Having not developed a sufficient
self-preservation instinct we laid there for what seemed like minutes until we
felt the cold-water seep thru our cotton outer layers and attack our clammy
skin. Our initial shock turned to wild
surprise as we got up and shook off like wet dogs in a bathtub. We looked at each other with wide eyes that
said ‘We are so screwed’ and we started to run for the house. Unfortunately, our little bodies could not
punch thru the crusty snow and for every one step up we took two steps back and
wound up back in the stream. My brother
began to curse his pre-pubescent curses, ‘shoot, doody, damn, #2’ and I sat on
the stream bank and began to cry. ‘Mom
and Dad will come and save us’, I thought, ‘they always do’. But our parents were on a second cup of
coffee and enjoying the quiet morning away from the rock-em, sock-em young boys
that so dominated their young lives.
I watched him trudge up, step by
step, breathing cold smoke from his lips and resting frequently to look
back. He disappeared once or twice over
the undulations but finally shrunk into a dot in the distance as he crested the
hill. I tried to follow but the
footsteps were too big and I could not break my own. He had a tenacity and indefatigability that I
had not developed yet so I just sat down and cried. ‘This is it’ I imagine now what I might have thought
then, ‘done in right before my half birthday, in the prime of my youth.’ ‘I will never learn to drive a car or ride a
bike, do long division or read, write a book or drink whiskey, love a dog or
kiss a girl’. I thought then of Patty O’Rourke,
sitting pretty in the back of our kindergarten play group with her bowed blonde
hair, her billowing, silky-white blouse and her pleated plaid, short-short
catholic skirt. ‘She will never
know’. ‘My parents will never see me
grow up and play sports, do well in school, get a good job and a fine woman and
have a family of my own to take on wild winter adventures. And I will never get to go skiing again,
ever, after mastering it all in only one day.
No more Thunder Bunny, no more Black Diamond slopes, no Olympic gold medals’.
Seeing no help on the horizon,
after what seemed like hours but was probably only 10 minutes, I began to get
angry and to look around for something, anything, to get me out. I slid over to the side fence of the pasture
and found it made of 6-inch wire squares that I could hook my hands and feet
into and pull myself up. Six inches at a
time, I pulled and pried my little frozen body up that fence, one miserable
step at time. I cried the entire time,
with snot bubbles coming out of my nose and freezing down my chin. I got mad, I got sad, I got glad from the hopeless
feeling of abandonment by my brother and my parents and my blooming
self-responsibility and accomplishment.
‘Don’t they miss me; don’t they know where I am and how much trouble I
am in’? ‘Screw them, I don’t need them,
I can do this by myself and when I do they are going think I am the bravest,
strongest, gnarliest kid in the world.’
They will probably let me drink a beer and drive home’.
Finally, after what seemed like an
infinite amount of time in my delirious little brain, I pulled myself up to the
back of the barn and saw the horses watch me take a drink from the running
water in the horse trough as I had seen my older cousin do once on a dare. I was famished, starving, thirsty and frozen
but I noticed, with my new, expanded perspective, the tiny rainbows glistening
off the snowflakes on the horse’s furry winter manes. The grain in the barn wood jumped out at me
in perfect brown, grey and black patterns.
The sun seemed to be setting behind wispy high clouds and dark green,
foreboding conifer hills lined with the skeletons of dormant birch trees. I began to notice the details and colors of a
place I had never seen before, and appreciate the world, not as a mere boy, but
as a young man.
The house was still a few hundred
yards away and my feet felt like frozen concrete blocks, but I took my time
getting there on the narrow horse path, taking in my new perspective,
self-awareness and confidence. I powered
through the back door undaunted, meeting my surprised family around the warm
fire where my Dad greeted me with a ‘well hello Junior’ and helped me off with
my coat and found me wet and frozen. We
both tried to put a brave face on it but when he couldn’t get my icy boots off
my frozen feet, I broke down into the apron folds on my mother’s lap and cried
like the little boy I really was. ‘They
would never know and could never understand’ I thought. ‘That which doesn’t kill you makes you
stronger.’
After a hot bath and hearty meal
of grilled cheese, potato chips, a dill pickle and hot chocolate, I settled
into an afternoon of blankets and slippers, dry long-johns and I even wore my
cool new ski hat inside since my Irish[2]
Dad always said, ‘If your feet are cold, put on your hat.’ The terror of my experience quickly began to
fade as we laughed and joked about it.
My brother apologized for abandoning me and for forgetting to tell Dad
where I was because he was trying to warm up.
‘You are a jerk but It’s ok,’ I said and we reckoned that this
experience would have killed any lesser men. I punched him in the arm but he didn’t me
punch back. We have that day to share
for the rest of our lives and it made us closer than any dumb Disney Land road
trip or family campout could.
I began to see winter in a
different light that weekend; something beautiful and fun but a force not to
trifle with or minimize but to respect and revere. Winter can please and entertain you but it
can also test you. It can measure your
mettle and preparedness, your tenacity and your smarts, your patience and
persistence, like a good friend or lover.
Spring is an exciting time of new beginning while summer is soft, lazy
and languid. Fall is full of color, death and decay, nesting and preparation,
but winter is wise, strong and beautiful, will love you and test you and
envelop you with its white blanket beauty and keep you honest, strong and
clean. I began my mixed relationship
with winter that weekend and even though we have had our ups and downs, we are
still hanging together after all these years, and probably always will.
[1] Newtons
second derivative of acceleration, the change in the change
[2] The
Irish usually consider it an insult if you leave your hat on in the house
Painting Credit - Lori Spragens
Painting Credit - Lori Spragens
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