31) Snow Snickets and Christmas

We were excited to have the kids home for winter break; not having to get up at 6:00am to be out the door by 7:30 to walk the two miles round trip to school in 20 degree temperatures definitely sweetened the deal.

The kids were excited too. They were definitely big fans of “lazy days” which according to them meant staying in one’s pajamas all day and lounging on the couch.

“Don’t ya’ll want to go sledding? Or play outside or something…”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Mom…” your middle child says, as if he’s about to explain the most basic concept in the history of concepts for the thirtieth time, “it’s fucking cold out there.”

“You’re a kid! Kids can handle the cold! And what difference does it make if you’re playing video games in the unheated sanctuary or playing outside? And also… watch the… (you caught yourself from saying fucking) language… your father doesn’t like it.”

You didn’t care… you found it funny to be honest. These kids were kind, respectful, never swore outside of the home, and were continually being called out in school for such exemplary behavior. Ever since you had read that article by a child psychiatrist about allowing kids to swear, you had jumped on board with all the vigor of a food motivated dog running towards a bite of steak. The article had talked about how beneficial it was in allowing children to understand the the right and wrong times to use such language… and they had that fucking mastered right from the get go. They were lyrical masters in your eyes, painting their worlds with the linguistic prowess of Hemingway… minus the alcoholism and misogyny.

“This isn’t the olden days mom… no one is outside,” your eldest chimed in.

He and his younger brother laughed.

You let out a loud sigh… in all fairness it was cold as fuck out there and you had yet to see a single other kid playing outside. My how times had changed.

“I’ll play outside with you Mommy,” your youngest had offered. Except it was cold out there and you really didn’t want to be outside. Fucking hypocrite.

The kids all got their wishes. On the Friday leading into winter break your eldest came home saying that he didn’t feel well. He looked awful. He had been fine in the morning when you walked them into school but by the time he got home he was pale with bright red cheeks, had a sore throat and his head felt hot to the touch.

‘The next day your middle child wasn’t feeling so well either. They got their lazy days.

You took your youngest sledding. Part of it was because she wanted to go and the other part of it was that you wanted to spend as little time as possible in the petri dish that had become your home.

You had been surprised to see two other kids with a parent sledding but they left soon after you and your daughter had arrived. Probably starting to get hypothermia, you had thought to yourself. It was so cold outside.

The two of you climbed the small hill and slid down. Over and over and over again until you were both so tired you didn’t want to make the trek up the hill. Your daughter plopped herself onto the ground and started making “snow devils” as she liked to call them. Your inside joke was that she was as she called it “deadly,” which was laughable considering she was just about the sweetest, most kind human you had ever met. She would often come home from school and do her best evil villian impression, telling you that she had bit a bunch of kids at school. “I bit 100 kids today,” she’d say… you’d both laugh… “I am a deadly Snicket.” That was her nickname… something silly David had called her years ago but the name had stuck and now she often referred to herself as Snicket in the third person.

You did your best not to tell her how pretty she was… after all… you wanted to raise a fierce little girl who prided herself on her smarts, work ethic, empathy and compassion but every once in a while you’d find yourself looking at what an absolutely beautiful little girl she was and you’d slip… “You sure are pretty…” you’d say.

“You mean… pretty deadly,” she’d say, doing her best creepy stare. You always found that hilarious, the sweetest person you knew who loved hummingbirds and flowers and pink and unicorns, masquerading as some sort of biting super villain. The humor in it made you both laugh.

She’d start off by making snow angels and then would carefully hop out of the pressed angel and carve two long ‘horns’ on the head with her thick winter gloves. “I bet people will be so scared when they see my evil snow devils!”

“You think so?”

“Oh I know so!”

When she tired of that she asked if you could help her to build a snowman… which she quickly corrected, “I mean a snow Snicket.”

“What’s a snow Snicket?”

“It’s basically like a snowman… snowwoman… but deadly!”

“How is it deadly? Do you build it over a rock pile so when kids come to kick it, they kick rocks instead?”

“MOMMY! That’s awful!”

You were both laughing. She finally told you that a snow Snicket is basically just a Snicket made out of snow. Which you didn’t really understand, but you went with it.

The snow on the ground was less than ideal for any type of sculpting or building. This snow wasn’t the wet, sticky stuff you remembered as a kid; this was more of a dry powder that would only stick to itself when you applied significant force… but not too much or it would collapse in on itself. When you were little you would start with a small hand packed ball of snow and roll it around the yard until eventually it grew into a large ball of snow and then you’d do the same with the next and the next, each one slightly smaller than the previous. A few kids could hoist the large snowballs easily into place and then you would shore up the sections by packing more snow around each joint, making a seamless transition from piece to piece.

There was no rolling this snow… doing so would have been the equivalent of trying to shape a bowl full of dry confectioners sugar into some sort of shape. You had to start small and pack squeezed sections into the last, one by one. The process was neither quick or easy and on more than one occasion you had thought about throwing in the towel, except that your daughter was seven, had never built a snow Snicket… or even a snowman/woman before and she was really into the whole thing. You were freezing but kept on going.

It wasn’t long before you had depleted your powdery supply around the snow Snicket. Your daughter ran off with her sled, the plastic disc she had picked out a few weeks ago and when she came back pushing it, it was full of snow. “Pretty smart, huh Mommy?” She grinned.

“You sure are pretty clever!”

“And deadly!”

“And deadly…” you agreed.

When you were done packing the snow, many sled fulls later, you had a rather lopsided yet fully functional snow Snicket. Your daughter had said that inorder for it to be a real snow Snicket that it had to be her EXACT height. No easy feat with the snow… Jesus Christ kid… really? It’s fucking freezing out…

Not too far from the Snicket’s location was a little stream, more of a run off of rain and melted snow from the hill yet it was wet underneath the new fallen powder and filled with decaying leaves. You both had noticed that when you accidentally dragged your feet through the little gully that the decaying leaf snow had turned the fresh snow brown. You grabbed gloved handfuls of the damp brown snow and packed it by the snow Snicket to give it brown ‘boots’. Your daughter found a couple of small branches and did her best to jam them into opposite sides of the snow Snicket, giving it the quintessential snow person look.

“Put this on there…” your daughter had said as she pulled her hat off.

“You want me to put your hat on the snow Snicket’s head? I don’t think you should do that… your head is going to be cold and it’s freezing!”

“I’m not cold… but the snow Snicket is. Give it my hat so it can be warm…”

“But it’s supposed to be cold!!”

“Mom… geez… just pretend ok?”

“Ok but the second you get cold, I’m taking it off the snow Snicket… and you know that we’re not leaving your hat here right?”

“I know.”

So reluctantly you let her put her hat on the snow Snicket. The two of you got more of the mushy brown snow to shape little eyes and a mouth and buttons. You had looked for small stones and little pinecones but had come up empty handed. You figured it was all done…

“It needs one more thing!” Your daughter had said…

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to give it my gloves. We can put them on the end of the sticks.”

You were drawing the line at the gloves.

“Absolutely not. It’s way too cold out. Matter of fact… you should probably put your hat back on.”

“Ok I won’t put my gloves on it… but I don’t want my hat back yet.”

As a compromise you made two small balls of snow packed tightly, roughly the size of your fists then jammed them onto the end of the sticks.

“Hey, what do you think of this?” You asked her.

“Is it holding snowballs to throw at people?!”

“It is!”

“That’s smart Mom.”

It was getting late. The sun, an almost invisible disc behind a thick grey winter sky neared the horizon, winter solstice just a few days away… “Let’s go down the hill on our sleds a few more times, and then we should go home. It’s getting late, it’s going to get dark soon and Daddy is probably making dinner right now.”

“Ok,” she agreed and the two of you raced up the hill and rode the sleds back down. Up and down, up and down, up and down, until finally you let yourself fall out of the sled into the snow, your back in the cold as you looked up at the sky. It was freezing out but peaceful. You had forgotten how quiet things got when the sky was thick with winter and the snow muffled everything.

“You ready to go home now?” She asked standing over you, her cheeks rosy and her bare head topped with flecks of snow.

“Yup.”

You gathered the sleds and helped her retrieve her hat from the snow Snicket.

“I wish you had brought your phone so that we could have taken a picture of my snow Snicket.”

“Yeah… I thought about that a little while ago. I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s ok. Maybe we can come back tomorrow and take a picture?”

“Well…” you were certain that a single snow Snicket in a public park would surely be pummeled by the first kid that walked by.

“Someone is going to smash it down huh? It probably won’t be here in the morning.”

“Yeah… I hate to say it, but it probably won’t be here by tomorrow… people like to smash snowmen and snow Snickets.”

She looked at you and grinned, a mischievous glint in her eyes… “I guess we should have built it over some rocks…”

The two of you laughed at the joke… which was mostly how awful that would have been and neither one of you would ever actually do that… but it was funny nonetheless.

You walked out of the park along the tree lined walkway, and then out into the little side street, the church’s belfry now visible. When you got to the busy street your daughter pushed the ‘WALK’ button on the post by the crosswalk. “Hold my hand ok?” You said, as you offered your daughter a gloved mitt.

“Mommy… I had fun today. I love spending time with you.”

“I love spending time with you too.”

********************************************************

Two days later and all of you but David were struck with whatever your eldest had picked up at school. You were thankful that you had gotten in the sledding and snow Snicket building before whatever it was that you had, swept through your family.

Growing up in a large Italian family you had always participated in The Feast of The Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve… and when your family moved to Florida and your mom took over the tradition she had quickly recruited David, an incredible cook to help with the feast. He’d make conch fritters, lobster bisque and a mustard dill salmon… new dishes that had quickly become family favorites and feast staples. This year you had both decided though that building a seven fishes feast for just the five of you was going to be not only far too much food… but far too much food that wouldn’t keep for long enough to justify the leftovers.

The plan had been instead to start a new tradition and head up to Rochester. Your entire family loved sushi and so you had all decided that you would find a nice sushi buffet and have your seven fishes that way. Except when everyone started coughing and complaining of sore throats and strange body aches and feelings of mild hallucinations where you couldn’t quite focus and felt a weird out of body sensation, you decided that taking your plague out and about would not be the Christmas cheer you wanted to share. Instead your husband placed a to go order from a local Chinese/Sushi restaurant and four out of the five of you sniffled and coughed and soothed your burning throats with hot tea and cider at your kitchen table. This hadn’t exactly been the new tradition you had been hoping for…

One tradition that you both did manage to keep though, was the tradition of telling yourselves that you absolutely would not under any circumstances, wait to wrap the kids’ gifts on Christmas Eve. Yet here you both were again, the kids tucked in bed, and the two of you delinquent elves scrambling to get everything wrapped before two AM.

We decided that David would do all the wrapping, you hated the feeling of paper anyway… and that you would assemble your daughter’s kitchen play-set that her Mema had sent for Christmas.

“Holy fucking shit… I can’t even find all the pieces,” you coughed into your handkerchief.

“Well I’m sure they’re all there… the box wasn’t opened.”

You waded through all of the pieces and panels that you had taken out and stacked neatly on the floor in numerous piles. There were screws marked A and B and C and D and E and each one looked nearly the same unless you held it up to another to compare. Two hours in and the neatly stacked piles had toppled and were strewn out across the floor.

“None of this makes any fucking sense. I feel awful and words aren’t currently wording and the pictures are making my head spin,” you blew your nose loudly into a handkerchief. You were wearing nitrile gloves, the feeling of the paper instruction booklet on your bare hands made your skin crawl. The irony of being an artist that hated the feeling of paper, pastels, chalk, and pencils had never been lost on you. “This is the weirdest fucking bug I’ve ever had… nothing is making sense. My brain just isn’t working right. It’s the strangest thing ever,” you coughed into your arm.

“Sorry hun.”

Words jumbled. Pictures blurred in your mind. You read the same thing over and over again… You fumbled with the screws and the nitrile gloves. You searched for section 33 and swore you had lost that piece only to find it ten minutes later sitting right in front of you. “I’m pretty sure I’m losing my fucking mind right now. Like I feel drunk but that gross drunk when you realize you drank way too much…”

David plugged away wrapping gift after gift… expertly folding and creasing and taping the wrapping paper… topping each finished gift with a metallic bow.

When he finished he jumped in to help you. You had messed up the directions and assembled the countertop before it should have been done which meant that it had made the rest of the installation that much more difficult. “These screws suck,” he commiserated.

“Tell me about it…” you groaned.

At 1:33 am the two of you tightened the last screw and carried the little kitchen set out of the kitchen and into the basement right by the kitchen door; the rest of the gifts carefully stacked in various sizes on a little card table. David put the large bow that he had found at Michael’s when you had stocked up on art supplies in Rochester last month.

“Christmas is wrapped!”

“We’re not doing this again next year… seriously… we have GOT to start wrapping on December 1st next year… this is fucking ridiculous.”

David agreed but you both knew though, that you would most definitely be in the same boat next year. This was one of the few Christmas traditions you had always managed to keep.

The next morning the kids were up bright and early. You and David had started sleeping up in the guest room, the room directly under the belfry on account of you being terrified of the kids being kids and getting hurt with the sketchy windows up there or even possibly deciding to check out the belfry on their own… a big ‘no, no’ but you couldn’t rule it out… kids will be kids. They had taken over your room, the primary bedroom, the three of them fit with plenty of room in the large king canopy bed. For the longest time they had slept in the sanctuary but once the temperatures dipped below freezing you had decided, even though they swore they were still warm in their sleeping bags, that they were going to sleep in your heated room until the basement was finished. Now you could hear them below you, their excited chatter, the doors that you begged them not to slam, slamming with each trip to the bathroom.

You and David bundled up then walked down into your room to brush teeth and rally the troops. When everyone was ready, you gave the signal that they could go unwrap gifts. There was a mad dash down the reading room steps and then the basement stairs into the little foyer with the heavy wooden door. The kids waited for you to catch up and then they swung the door open to see the little kitchen set and the card table with presents. Your youngest squealed with delight when she saw the kitchen set and when your boys unwrapped their new Playstation they just about lost their minds. Everyone… despite feeling like shit, had a wonderful Christmas.

Later that evening when the kids were asleep and you and David had gotten into bed it dawned on you… “You know what I just realized…?”

“What’s that?” Said David.

“This place is 130 years old… and yet this is THE first time that kids have ever run downstairs to open up gifts Christmas morning…”

“Oh wow… I bet you’re right…”

That made you both incredibly happy… to add such a beautiful family first to this historic place… and even though David wound up coming down with that weird bug the very next day… the five of you still managed to have a wonderful first Christmas and winter break in your new ‘home’.

This was our holiday card this year… David and I had just finished working in the basement, hence my sweats and his coveralls and the kids had just come home from school… it was a quick impromptu photo but I definitely love it!