Ringing in the Holidays

Snowman

    I'm less than five years old.  I have to be at least three.  It's winter, and I'm still living in my first home.  It's a brick townhouse perched at the end of a long row of brick townhouses. 

     We moved out of that house on my fifth Halloween, and I was Wolverine that year, so I know for a fact that I had to be less than five during this memory.

    It snowed.  The whole neighborhood is white and fluffy and the hill outside of our house is a sledding paradise.  I want to make a snowman.  I want to make my first snowman ever, so I ask my father if he'll teach me.

    "Daddy, will you make a snowman with me?"

    "There's not enough snow."

    So I go to the window and I look outside and I say, "No, there is a lot of snow."

    I run upstairs and my father helps me get my winter jacket and boots and gloves and knit hat with a little bobble on the top of it.  I love that hat because I feel like Waldo from Where's Waldo.  It wasn't red and white, but the bobble was classy for a four-year-old.  I put on these waterproof snow pants that are designed to keep me dry and warm when I roll around in the snow, but I hate them because they strap over my shoulders like suspenders.

    We go outside.  Now, I'm not sure if it was because of the way the snow drifted overnight, or because my father didn't want to be seen building a snowman with his child, but he decides the best place to build a snowman was behind a dead blueberry bush to the side of our yard. 

    In the summer it always had a bluish tint to it, and it covered the power box for our street.  I would often hide in the bush and use it as a fort despite the fact that my parents repeatedly told me it was dangerous to play near the neighborhood's source of electricity.

    My father helps me roll up balls of snow from the side of our yard and one of our neighbors yards, and we stack up three perfect snowballs.  One, two three, and we have the basic anatomy of Frosty.  I'm proud of our work, and I poke button holes in his chest with my finger.  I ask my father if we have a carrot and coal.  He says no.

    "Do we have anything to put on the snowman?"

    He takes my scarf and wraps it around the snowman's non-existent neck.  I'm ecstatic.  I stand on the tiptoes of my rubber boots and attempt to poke holes in his head for eyes and a nose and a mouth.  Before I manage this, my father pulls me aside.  With his thumb he presses two eyes, a little nose, and a pleasant smile onto his face.  It is, at this point, the proudest winter day of my childhood.

    I tell my father how excited I am to show our creation to Mom.  He frowns and says, "No.  Don't tell your mother we made this."

    I'm confused but I oblige and step back a few feet to revel in the satisfaction of such a perfect, spherical, five-feet-two-inch snowman.  He needs a top hat, definitely, but we don't own one, so he'll just have to make do with a cold head.

    We stand there, my father akimbo next to our creation and me only a few yards in front of it.

    "Alright," he says.  "Time to knock it down."

    "What?"

    "Knock it down!"

    I'm dumbstruck.  It was my belief that snowmen were meant to live out their natural lives and then melt at the end of winter.  Apparently, this is not the case for our poor frozen friend.  I'm incapable of reasoning.

    "But he's smiling."

    My father's jaw hangs open for a moment.  Then he blinks.

    "Okay.  Now tackle him."

    "How?"

    "Just run at him and throw your arms up and knock it over."

    I wasn't an overly sensitive child, but I was a coward.  Whenever the dancing vegetables came on Sesame Street I would run away and cry.  I think it was the singing baritone broccoli that really bothered me.

    But I'm standing here staring at this snowman that took all of a twenty minutes to make.  Our snowman is still smiling.  He has no arms, though I had intended to find some.  To me, this was my personal Prometheus.  My masterpiece.  A dream realized.

    To my father, it was football practice.

    "If you don't knock him over, I will!"  My father is a hard ass.  I know he's not bluffing.

    "Wait!" I cry.  "I'll do it!"  Something inside of me was convinced that if I, and not my father, destroyed the snowman, then this would all be worthwhile.  I told you, I'm incapable of reasoning.

    I remember breathing.  The wind carried my breath, and as I started clumsily sprinting towards our creation puffs of cold vapor breezed past my eyes.  I was racing towards my newest friend like a linebacker on a mission and as my awkward boots lifted from the ground clumps of wet snow stuck to my heels.  We collided.  The snow stung my skin and my eyelashes were caked white.  I remember lying on my face, ashamed.  The deed was done.

    I roll over and the clouds from the night before still haven't left.  The sky is gray and still and archetypically January.  I eventually reach my feet and dust the snow from my shoulders.  My father is laughing.  A little ambivalent about the whole situation, I smile in an attempt to please him.

    "Alright.  Let's go inside.  Don't tell your mother."

    "Why not?"

    "Because she'll get mad."

    So we trudge back twenty feet indoors and he helps me take my boots off.  My mother calls me from my bedroom to change my clothes.  I scamper up the carpeted stairway and stomp into my room soaking wet.

    "Did you have fun?"  She smiles and gives me a hug.

    I laugh and tell her how much fun I had.

    As she helps me remove my sweater she asks, "So what did you two do?"

    I stare directly at her, silent.  She asks me again, "So what did you two do?"

    "We made a snowman."

    "Oh really?  Where is it?"  She is still smiling.

    If I had to tell the truth, I figured I should do it with pride, "I knocked it down!"

    She slaps me.  Right on the ass.  I get spanked for playing in the snow.

    "Why did you do that before I got to see it?"

    "Dad told me to knock it down and not tell you!"

    She spanks me again.  She isn't smiling.  She flips me around and points her finger, "Don't you lie to me."

    I'm shocked.  I didn't want to knock it down in the first place!  I only did it to please my father, and then my own mother gives me a spanking!  Of course, I can't explain this to her.  She didn't believe me, and that's all I know.

    I can't remember if she talked it over with my father.  I can't remember if she apologized.  I know my father never apologized for making me destroy my first snowman minutes after we had created it.  I wasn't too scared to be honest, I just wanted to make the man happy.

    I'm not sure if my parents even discussed the snowman, if it mattered to them.  I did learn something, though  From that day on I knew that if I ever came to a crossroads where I had to choose between love and orders, I would always choose the former.