The First Snow & My Dad

I've always loved the look of snow on leaves.  It's as if they got sugar dusted.  As I get older my body doesn't like the cold much.  That gets more challenging each year.  I grew up in New York state though and winters there are hard.  It starts snowing in October and really doesn't stop until April.  I love the winters in Colorado.  There's a cold spell, then snow, then it all melts and goes away for a few days.  It's not the constant snow you get from the North East back home in Hornell New York.  In Colorado we're a bit south of that latitude.  I like it better in Colorado.  

I do miss New York sometimes.  I remember walking that one mile walk home from school and by the time I got home my wrists were red and raw from where the end of my gloves didn't quite meet the edge of my coat.  It was like that all winter there.  If you had a hood it was all the way over your face or you wore a ski mask.  Those were the worst!  You'd breathe through the mouth part and it would get wet from your breathing and then freeze around your lips.  That happened under the nose part too.  It was better than having your face exposed to the bitter cold.

Everyone looked like they were going to rob a bank.  It was kind of creepy but when you're face stings from the cold you don't care what you look like anymore or if it makes your hair look flat.  Thank goodness the hair style was long, straight and parted in the middle in the 70s.  It worked.  

My kids never did have to experience that.  They grew up in Southern California where it got cold in Winter but only really cold enough for a windbreaker.  We had Winter coats for them just so we could go up to Big Bear Lake or Arrowhead and play in the snow with snow dishes, once it got cold.  We did that a few times a year.  We'd pack up the car, drive up into the mountains and look for a good hill to sled down.  It was a lot of fun.  Everyone would get really cold but I remember the kids having a ball, so it was worth it.  They had the big red snow dishes with the handles on the sides that you could hold onto as you slid down the hill.  Then you had to drag it back up the hill to do it again.

My father did the full on skiing.  He took me out with him a few times but I wasn't very good at it.  I used to fall getting off the chair lift and embarrass him.  I was so scared of not making it off the chair that I would wait too long then push off too late and the chair would hit me in the rear and knock me over.  He'd just stand there shaking his head at me.  One time I actually skied into a bush and cut my cheek.  I got to the bottom of the hill and my sister Anna was down there waiting for us.  I told her how much fun it was and she looked at my bleeding face and said, "Yeah right."  She was no dummy, not going to do THAT.  

Dad was a phenomenal skier.  He used to be an instructor.  He lived in Greenland for a while when he was in the Army.  My father was always active and physically fit.  I didn't get his talent for sports but I had a lot of curious energy so I followed him around.  I wasn't the "boy" he wanted though.  I think a son would have been more his speed but he loved me and I did my best to hang out with him.  My mother and my sister were content to stay home and watch the snow with a cup of hot chocolate and cable.  I was somewhere in between that.  More adventurous but not quite the "camping" girl either.  Camping for me was when room service ended at midnight. 

Dad grew up in New York state, Watertown actually.  That's up by the Canadian border.  We lived in Camp Drum (Fort Drum now) where it would snow in feet not inches.  I remember driving home with my mother and the snow drifts were so tall that it was like driving through a tunnel.  We lived there for a  year while my father went to Vietnam.  It was called Waiting Wives Quarters.  We lived next door to the nicest family.  I can't remember their names but they had a son around my age.  They got the horrible news that the father had been killed in Vietnam and they moved shortly after that.  That's what happened when the father of the family wasn't coming home.  We lived in fear of those people coming to our little duplex to tell us something that would change our lives forever.  I was 11 when we lived there.  Anna was 12.  We were in junior high school at Carthage Central School.  Those were some of the coldest Winters I remember.  Up there in the Klondike.  hahahaha

Dad did come home.  I remember seeing him walking towards us in his khaki uniform.  It was surreal.   I just remember how handsome he was.  That I was crying and mom was crying and so was Anna.  We all didn't know if we would ever see him again and there he was.  It was incredible and we knew how blessed we were to have our dad come home because so many kids we played with weren't that lucky.  As a kid you just want everything to work out and be okay in your family.  You want your world to make sense.  This was the second time he'd been to Vietnam.  The first time was when I was 7 and in the 3rd grade in Watertown New York.  Both times were very hard on my mother.  She did such a great job with us and did her best not to scare us or say or do anything that would make things upsetting for us.  One testament to her courage is that I don't remember feeling like dad was in any danger when I was little.  She did that for me.  I know that now.

As a parent we can only do so much but protecting our children from what hurts them is so important that you sometimes sacrifice your own needs to help theirs.  Even doing that isn't enough when they're learning things like love doesn't last forever.  It can but sometimes it doesn't.  I was grateful that my parents stayed married.  They had hard times but they endured.  They made it to their 50th anniversary and dad died the following June.  That was 12 years ago.  

Dad made winter fun.  Skiing and snowmobiling were just two of the things we did.  Every year on the first snow I think about all that.  I wish my kids had been able to go snowmobiling with him.  I wish a lot of things but I think about it on days like this.  Watching the white snow swirling around outside blowing the tree branches around.  A haze of white outside the window.   I miss him.  Especially today.