February 24th, 2010
Saturdays are for snowmen
Our impatient, very bored daughter has spent much of winter indoors, gazing out the window and wishing aloud for ’sunflower-growing’ time. She can’t wait to walk out the back door to the paved trail that meets our property line, where we will head east to the community garden, or west toward the duck pond and the library. She longs to get on her bike, or her scooter, and use her little body to create forward-moving energy. Instead, she sits in a chair by the window and looks at snow as far as the eye can see. She is a warm-weather person.
Last I heard, we’ve had 63 inches this season. And it’s been that dry, powdery snow that does not pack well. So for all the blizzards and drifting and shoveling we have endured, nary a snowman has graced our front yard. It could also have to do with the fact that I do not play well with snow.
Snowmen are a Daddy thing; I’m the hot-cocoa maker.
But last Saturday, the sun shone, which caused some melting. The snow became heavy and wet, and my husband and daughter went outside to play. Pretty soon, my phone rang. It was my husband saying, “Bring us a face!” So I quickly gathered two smooth, black stones for eyes, a carrot for a nose, and raisins for a smile. And a bright, red scarf. I went out and we gave the snow creature a personality (although the raisins promptly fell off and the dog gobbled them up, so our snowman is a coy fellow).
He’s a run-of-the-mill snowman. Better snowmen have been constructed. (A couple of guys in the next town over even constructed a six-foot-tall snow penis that made the evening news!) But my daughter loves him, and greets him every morning on her way to the bus. He leans forward a bit now, and one of his eyes has disappeared.
She changed his name from “Andrew” to “Cyclops,” and loves him just the same.
