When all was said and done yesterday, we got about two inches of snow – not nearly as much as our friends in New Orleans, but still.
The day filled with pop-ins from the two grandsons next door, mostly exuberant 11-year-old Owen. Benjamin, recovering from a head cold and nearing the blasé world of teenage, was a bit more subdued. The day went like this.
The first pop-in came early as Owen and I commiserated about the lack of snow that had been promised by the weatherman. I showed him my metal bowl I had placed on the sidewalk to collect clean snow for snow cream. By ten o’clock a mist of tiny flakes could be seen if you put on glasses and strained your eyes, but it began to pick up shortly thereafter.
By eleven o’clock the ground had a confectioner’s sugar coating. Owen reappeared to make a snow angel and check the snow bowl. The bowl had a thin coat of snow, leaving us wondering if we would ever get enough for the snow cream.
By noon, the snow had increased enough to come down seriously and our bowl accumulated to about a third of its capacity. I told Owen we would wait until the snow stopped as was predicted about two o’clock and see if we had enough. He left, and I watched him in comfort from my easy chair in my warm house as he and Benjamin reverted in honor of the snow to the childhood slide they had outgrown. Benjamin tired and went inside, leaving Owen to throw accumulated fine snow into the air as high as it would go from the bed of their father’s truck.
With the weatherman’s accurate prediction, the snow let up about two, and I began a text to Owen’s tablet, but he was already watching and turned up before I finished the text. We did indeed have enough snow for the snow cream. As we finished mixing, Owen asked me to text Benjamin to join us for the treat. Like his brother, before I could finish the text, Benjamin showed up ready and willing to relish the treat.
Owen made a final pop-in late in the afternoon, determined to make a snow baby if not a snow man from our two inches. Pulling out his childhood shovel, also outgrown until the snow arrived, he scraped together enough to make a cute baby with the required carrot nose, attired in hat and scarf against the snow.
As we admired his work, Owen said, “I am going to remember this day as long as I live.” It had been six years since he had seen snow in his own yard, and his memories of that time were vague. He had made his own fun all day in our two inches of snow, and at eleven, he would be old enough to remember. I agreed with him and thought to myself, “So will I.”