by Liz Flaherty
Helen suggested talking
about winter memories today, which caused me to frown at my keyboard for a
while. Thinking.
I don’t mind winter. I
won’t say I love it, and I’m never sorry to see it end, but
With
sports comes quality cuisine. Nachos, hot dogs, popcorn, candy bars,
hot
chocolate—did I mention nachos? Sports are also good exercise for athletes’
parents. At our school, the home side is always the Other Side. This means
walking roughly four miles around the end of the football field to the home
bleachers. Then four miles back to get the blanket you left in the car.
Basketball
and volleyball offer fitness opportunities, too. If you sit on the top row of bleachers,
you get to lean against the wall. Never mind that there’s a reason those are
called nosebleed seats and that your knees—well, okay, my knees—are ready for me to sit down about a row and a half up
from the floor.
Winter
sports are hard on your voice. Yelling at officials who in no way
understand
the game they’re officiating. Yelling some more—and possibly spilling popcorn
on everyone below you—when your particular athlete does something outstanding. Yelling
at a parent across the floor or field who calls your athlete a name.
It’s
been years. My kids played in the 1980s and early 90s. But those memories are
still some of the best, the sharpest, the sweetest.
How
about you? Any winter memories you’d like to share?
Merry Christmas!
by Helen DePrima
I can’t imagine I can
contribute any new thoughts about Christmas. My cards are sent, gifts bought,
tree decorated. Now I can concentrate on surviving the rest of the winter. I
don’t ski or skate or snowshoe; my winter sport is keep a path shoveled between
the back door and the bird feeder.
But except for my childhood
when the rare snowfalls in Kentucky brought out my
grandparents’ antique sleigh
pulled by our old pinto Mothball, I’ve spent most of my life in places where
snow is celebrated rather than tolerated.
After high school, I lived
ten years in Boulder and Fort Collins, Colorado without once skiing down a
slope. My experience with snow focused more on keeping my VW Beetle on the mountain
roads between Visiting Nurse appointments. Creeping down an unmarked
single-lane from the high country once in a snow storm, I vowed never again to
schedule a winter house call without first checking the forecast. The wet
blacktop winding through Poudre Canyon, when I slid down the last switchback, looked
like my hope of heaven.
After my husband graduated
from vet school, I should have insisted on settling where winter lasted maybe a
month around Christmas. Instead, we’ve spent the last forty years in New
Hampshire. I get through time between Christmas and the end of mud season by poring
over seed catalogues, by starting a quilt and finishing a manuscript. I have a
fire in the wood stove and my laptop on the corner of my lap not taken up by my
Maine Coon. Let it snow.
Your white knuckled trip in the mountains reminded me of the solid whiteout I drove on the highway. The normal 2-hour drive at night took 4.5 hours. My earliest memories of dealing with snowed-in roads is on a school bus. When the bus usually went in the ditch in the mornings, it was met with cheers from the kids.
ReplyDeleteWhat scared me most about that trip down the canyon was the isolation. No cell phone back then, and the few houses I passed were summer cabins, locked down until spring. No one would guess anyone would be dumb enough to come down that road in a snow storm, and a snow-covered Beetle at the bottom of the gorge would be just another boulder.
DeleteLol. I had a few of those bus-in-the-ditch moments!
DeleteNowadays winter is best enjoyed in my childhood memories as I hate the cold and often fear slipping on icy sidewalks. But I remember wonderful wintry nights skating on backyard rinks under clear starry skies. I love the photo of your family sleigh, Helen - now I’d leave my cosy nook for a moonlit ride in that! Merry Christmas to,you,both!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Janice. I broke my leg nearly thirty years ago on a fragment of ice in my own driveway; ever since, I creep along like a turtle on the rare occasions I'm forced to walk on a slick surface.
DeleteThat sleigh is beautiful, isn't it? I share that fear of falling. I'm walking around with a broken nose right now because I tripped over the snowy shoes we left on the rug to dry.
DeleteBeautiful sleigh.
DeleteLiz, my memory is learning to ice skate on a frozen creek at the age of five pushing a little chair ahead of me. Helen, sounds like you have a memoir in you. That sleigh pic is lovely. Merry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteI don't know why we had a sleigh, considering the rarity of snow. I suspect my grandfather acquired it on one of his horse-trading expeditions. In addition to horses and mules, he sometimes brought home goats, piglets, and once a fancy pet chicken with feathery feet.
DeleteI love that memory, T.R. I don't know how to skate, but wish I'd learned--especially now that I'm picturing a little girl with a chair. :-)
DeleteThere was a time I liked snow. Loved sledding, loved skiing, loved drinking hot buttered rum in the ski lodge. I'm not sure when I began to like summer better. Not humidity, but summer heat draws me. When our kids grew up and moved away and arthritis stopped my skiing, maybe that's when I began to like snow from inside my house better. The post makes me reflect, though. Enjoy the season.
ReplyDeleteI wish I liked the heat, but I just don't. I've been in a near-constant state of hot flash since I turned 40. I admit to liking it all better from inside, though.
DeleteRoz, like you, I treasure the warmth of summer. Growing up in the southern Ohio Valley before AC was common, I can laugh at what passes for heat in New Hampshire. I can tolerate winter for the beautiful spring (all ten minutes of it), summer and fall here.
ReplyDeleteOnce we had a snowstorm in Memphis and school closed down. I had the bright idea that if my sister and I got off the school bus half a mile from home, we could take a shortcut through the woods to our house. I forgot about the dry creek that ran between us and the house. The dry creek we couldn't climb out of. By the time we got home, our parents were frantic. Grounded, anyone?
ReplyDeleteOh, my gosh, Pat. Shades of Anne of Green Gables!
DeleteYour folks must have had a fit once you showed up.
DeleteLiz Flaherty, you love Winter for all the same reasons I do: it’s not hot, the bugs are gone (mostly), and the snow is lovely. If the daylight was longer I’d love it even more. I miss the lovely flowers in Spring, but I’m beginning to love winter more and more. It encourages warmth and cozy pursuits like reading Heartwarming books with my cat at my feet and a hot beverage in my hands. What’s not to love about that? It’s a blessing to have four seasons for sure, but I do have my favorites.
ReplyDeleteWe're a perfect match, Laurie!
DeleteHi Laurie -- Yes, you're in a perfect climate, four seasons but not too much of any. My daughter just moved to Mebane and loves it after 14 years in Brooklyn.
DeleteI just visited NY during the coldest week they’d had and surprisingly I was okay with it. I was dressed really warm. I lived in Bklyn most of my life and was used to the cold. It’s funny, I feel worse in warm, humid weather than I do in cold weather. Go figure.
DeleteThanks for both posts. Winter holds many memories for me, too, especially here in Wisconsin, and in Maine and Chicago, too. Every time there's a big snow drop it's compared to some other storm. In Asheville, NC, where I lived in the '90s, I was a volunteer for a crisis line, and the person who ran it said she looked forward to the snowfall, which didn't happen that often. She said the city became more peaceful when snow started falling and the crisis line was quiet for a day or two--and sometimes longer because it was hard to remove snow there and things shut down for days sometimes. It turned out to be true. There is something about the quiet snow and slowing down that truly brings a sense of peace. But at the moment, I have to hustle out to get "supplies" before the snow starts later!
ReplyDeleteMy kids live near Asheville, but up in the mountains. The snow they had this winter was beautiful, but if I'd been there, I'd still be in the house--no way I'd drive down the mountain in it!
DeleteHi Virginia -- yes, winter storm predicted here tomorrow as well. I love Asheville, except for their weird traffic patterns -- all those intertwining Interstates. We spent Thanksgiving a few years ago at an inn up the mountain from Maggie Valley and got snowed in for three days. Their road drops 2500 ft. in two miles, a harrowing slither down to the valley.
DeleteI have similar memories to both of you. Helen, I remember my first time driving on ice after moving from Texas to Wyoming.(Not that West Texas doesn't have ice, but I'd never driven on it.) I was doing okay, creeping along the amost-abandoned highway, when overconfidence made me speed up to maybe 20, and I started to drift. I touched the brake, spun in a full circle and a half, and ended up facing the wrong way. Over on the frontage road, a policeman watched me from his car. I waved, turned around, and crept home. Lesson learned.
ReplyDeleteLiz, I understand about winter sports. In Alaska, high school soccer is played in the spring. By spring, I mean they bladed the snow off the turf and piled it in berms surrounding the field so the teams could play. There always seemed to be a stiff breeze coming off the ocean. The players on the field moved enough to keep warm, but the bench and the parents huddled in sleeping bags and shivered. If any younger sibling had happened to lick the metal bleachers where we sat, we'd have had a Christmas story moment to deal with. Looking back, I wouldn't change a thing, except maybe bought a warmer hat.
Lol. Yes on that warmer hat! Like you, there isn't much I'd change except to have those years last longer.
DeleteOh yes, Wyoming weather! We hit snow once on I-80 in May, got as far as Laramie before the state gated off the highway. Spent three days there (Go 'Pokes!) before we could continue south into Colorado.
DeleteI grew up in Buffalo, NY -- enough said.
ReplyDeleteLol. So you have some indication of what winter can be like, right?
DeleteI graduated nursing school at University of Rochester -- I well remember lake-effect snow. The best part of those years was the tunnel from our dorm to Strong Memorial Hospital and the first Wegman's within walking distance.
DeleteIt was lovely when I managed to get help on https://buyessays.info/blog/abortion-essay-writing-guide. I even got a high grade for abortion essay
ReplyDelete