Snowbound
By Jean Southworth
December 2003
Before I sat down just now, I had to ask my
children what day it was. I'm that befuddled. The last extra kid just left a
couple hours ago. His dad, a trucker, had to install tire chains on his
son's car before they could leave. Joey had already mostly dug his Sentra
from the deep accumulation
using one of my rubber cutting boards. I wasn't sure what color his car was
before that.
Two nights ago, Zach asked if he could have
some friends over. We ended up with 6 boys, 5 girls, and over 11 inches of
snow. (I'm more certain of the snow number than the kid number. There may
have been more. Kids, not snow.) Late in the evening, as those first flakes
dropped, Jim warned, "You may want to leave pretty soon as it gets kinda
slippery up here!" They had selective hearing.
Eventually, 3 girls and 1 boy left. It wasn't easy. Around midnight, the last
2 girls tried to go home, but their VW bug spun and slid so much they soon
returned grinning, flushed and breathless. "We can't leave!"
Jim and I took a midnight walk in the quiet,
pristine snowfall, or at least it would have been that way, were it not for
our pup, Bailey. She got more worked up by the snow than she does by
squirrel dogs. After we returned home, I unearthed our every sleeping bag,
pad, blanket and pillow from storage. Girls upstairs, boys down. I shouldn't
have bothered so much with the boys. Zach led a small contingent who stayed
up the entire night. I dug out all our gloves, hats and scarves, distributed
new toothbrushes and finally joined Jim for bed at 3 AM, while kids ran
inside and out, around the neighborhood and up and down the hills on sleds
and goodness knows where else until the sun rose.
At 6 AM, they were hungry for breakfast so I made french toast. (Yes, that's
three hours of sleep.) Some of the all-nighters didn't know whether to refer
to "today" or "yesterday" in conversation. As the day wore on, I pulled out
all my Christmas leftovers, heated them in pretty bowls, and set them out.
They disappeared.
Some parents retrieved their kids as the day
wore on, and the boy with a 4 wheel drive truck made it out on his own, but
the roads stayed so slipperyup here that we never got mail. Jim answered the
phone. Mary called about her exchange student son. Jim was clueless which
kid he was. (We had more than one Chris here, and I was in the shower at the
time.) Mary dispatched her real son to come fetch Chris on foot. They don't
live too far away, but Chris was uncertain about the way to go. Chris
scampered off in his t-shirt and jeans before I could force a coat on him.
Everyone said not to worry: Chris was from Sweden. Still, I know everyone
will wonder, "How could she let him go out like that?" It's still a sexist
world, at least when it comes to outerwear.
Here is Zach's website link with his snow pictures:
www.geocities.com/balloons689/snow.htm
There's still more to say. I know there's at least one car that's not ours
buried out front. I'm just too sleep-deprived to remember anything else
interesting. Plus Annie wants me to come see the snowman she and Taylor just
built. She tells me it's snowing again.