Story © by Alura 1997
All rights Reserved
SNOWY RAMBLINGS
"Peek-a-boo," I call out to Maggie through the plastic window of the stroller canopy. I hope she can see the snow falling from down there. She is two years old and snow is a passing interest. I think she is cold enough not to care and just wants to get home. She really doesn't like the cold and will say in her limited vocabulary, "Hans code, go in houze." (Hands cold, go in the house).
Joshua is five years old and in school. I wish he were here to see the snow. He is old enough and enough of my child to see this wonder and love some of the things I love. Their father could have cared less about beautiful snowfalls, rest his soul. Being from Africa, snow was a wonder and he loved it the first few times he saw it, but after that it was a nuisance and he found it too cold.
I look up and open my mouth. The cold flakes hit everywhere on my face except in my mouth and I know I look a little foolish standing there in the snow, a grown woman of twenty eight, trying to catch snowflakes in her mouth. But there is a definate reason I had to open my mouth.
This snow is beautiful. The flakes are huge and there is no wind so they are falling straight down. It is quiet and everything seems to be stopped just waiting for this snow to fall. The flakes are pure white against the background of the trees and houses but when I look up into the sky, which is pure white, the flakes take on a slightly gray hue. I can see the big flakes and follow one from way up in the sky until it falls all the way down to the ground, onto the stroller, or on my face.
The other time in my life that I specifically remember a snow like this was when I was five and a half years old. That is why I thought of Joshua and that perhaps this snow may mean something to him too. Maybe not. I don't know why I remember that snowfall when I was five so vividly.
We had moved from New Brunswick to Calgary, Alberta when I was four and a half and stayed there until I had just turned six years. We spent two winters there before we could come home to the Maritimes again.
I was attending the birthday party of one of my pre-school classmates. She lived in the same apartment building complex that we did. The children were told to go outside to play and I remember standing in a small field and looking up. There were those same snow flakes. Huge, gray against the white sky and white against the apartment building. I opened my mouth and tasted them. We were all doing that, trying to catch them.
I remember vaguely something about an older boy there with an air rifle or bb gun. He was standing in the snow with it. And we went for a walk. I remember a man coming out of an apartment building and yelling at us because one of our group had been looking in his window in the basement. He said it was not nice or polite to look in peoples' windows.
We went back to the party and I remember only one present that little girl got. She got a pair of white figure skates. I must have been aware at the age of five years that we were poor, because those figure skates were to me the best present anyone could ever get.
My family had been skating on a nearby outdoor rink. Mom had found me and my three year old sister, Betty, some used boys skates somewhere. Our baby sister, Amy, was in a sled as we tried to skate around. I remember Betty sitting on the ice most of the time. I loved skating and dreamed, since that time, of being a figure skater.
That must have been the same winter we went to Christmas dinner at my mom's new husband's family's place. I remember walking there. We walked in a direction we had never gone before, down a hill, the house was at the bottom of a hill and around a corner. My mother would probably be very surprised I remember all this. We had food there I had never seen before. I was told later by my mother that she had brought her dressing to this dinner and one woman who was from the Maritimes, like us, almost cried because she had missed the dressing. It made her remember home. It is hard living so far from home especially on holidays.
I hope Amy does okay. She is now, at the age of twenty four, out in Alberta again. She is working in Banff and this will be her first Christmas away from home. We will miss her. Last year was the first Christmas I wasn't home but I went home in the first week of January. It was still the Christmas season. And being in Halifax isn't the same as living as far as Alberta.
Anyway, I can also recall the previous Christmas in Alberta, when I was four and a half and Betty must have been just three. We were sitting on the swing set in our snowsuits and swinging, singing out loud "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and looking at the mountains on the horizon. Being a Maritimer my mother was in awe looking at those mountains from the backyard but she also missed the ocean. It is comforting to know for most of us that the ocean is not far away. I know, I have the Atlantic in my blood too.
My mother is a big science fiction fan and I think it was at that Christmas dinner she told me a story of a dinner in the future when all our meals will be little pellets and if you think of a food when you eat it, it will taste just like the food you were thinking of. I think I was thinking of that as I was sitting at that long table with all the strange people and food.
That was the same Christmas that we got boxes from charities. I once tried to write this story when I was about thirteen but my teacher said it was too personal and I shouldn't share it with anyone. What is the purpose of writing stories if you can't share something personal?
We were poor. There should be nothing shameful in that. We always had enough to eat and my mother managed to get us what we needed and we were happy. I can say the same thing for me and my kids. They aren't lacking anything and they are plenty happy. You have to make the best of things. We got boxes from charities then. I think one was brownies or guides. It was a big event to have a box of food and toys come to the door!
I will get a box this year too. And maybe a vouchure for food at the supermarket. It is needed. With the extra oil we use because it is cold, and the presents I have to buy or make, there is not enough money in December. When Joshua was only a few months old I got a form asking what I would like as a gift for Joshua from some charity. I wrote in bold letters FORMULA because I wasn't breastfeeding and spending about seventy five dollars per month in formula. I breastfed Maggie for fourteen months so I didn't have that problem. I got a big box of formula. On these forms I always want to prove a point. I don't ask for toys or frivolous things. I always ask for necessities. I want the people involved to know that we as poor mothers care deeply about our childrens' needs and that we really need the help and appreciate it. They also sent me a few toys for him.
That whole time out west was really tough on my mother. I won't get into it but I would say it was two of the toughest years of her life. And she had to arrive in Calgary, be stuck with nothing and try to get enough money to get back to New Brunswick, with three little girls all five years and under.
We didn't have winter coats. I remember taking a drive with her and a friend out to a logging camp somewhere in the evening. I can still see the camp, logs laying around and the big machines. I love the smell of fresh cut wood. And then the highway on the way back, all black except the lines on the road and the other car lights. We were in a pick-up. Apparently that man had given my mother $75 to buy us coats. That was so nice of him.
So I guess I did know we were poor. At five years though, how much does a child know about poverty? I know that that birthday party with the pink stuff, the decorations, the paper plates, and the figure skates was something that would not have been part of my world. And looking back, I don't think it mattered. The best thing about that day had been those big flakes falling down on my face. They made me remember, twenty three years later, the events of that day and of the winters in Calgary. The events aren't necessarily fond memories, but that snow is.
As I walk down the street with Maggie in her new stroller with big wheels that will help me get around in the snow and on icy sidewalks, I wish Joshua was here to see the snow. I want him to have fond memories of snow like this too. I want him to see how beautiful it is. I wonder if he would remember this day at five years and the events of this year when he is twenty eight years old. And will he have a child then that he can walk with and tell his snowy rambling memories to. Just like I have.
The End
