December 3, 2021

During my early grade school years we lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and my memories of winters there were of snow and cold, mittens and mufflers, snow boots with buckles, and outerwear steaming on radiators. 

We had skis and skates and visits to the local parks where we skied down short little hills and skated on the bumpy ice of frozen small ponds. We made snow balls and snow forts. When we came inside there was cocoa and music and books. 

And there was Christmas and all its magic, which my mother worked so hard to create and which I think we all took for granted. Now I hang some of those fragile glass ornaments on my own fresh green tree and think of her. 

Some winter I would like to fly away after Christmas, back to Minnesota, to the little cabin built by my parents on a ledge half way down the hill, overlooking the lake. From that perch I would be able to look out over the frozen ice to the pine trees on the other side. At night the moon would glitter on the snow and the ice, and the wind sigh through the trees. But that is a fantasy, because there is no running water in winter, the only heat comes from electric baseboards, and the steps down the hill are a toboggan run for local friends. But nevertheless I imagine sitting there with my mother’s ghost looking over the hill and lake she loved so much, listening to the winter wind.