These Souveniers

Boys don't check thermometers on winter days. I do, but they don't. Boys press their faces to the windows, fling back bedroom curtains into superhero capes, celebrating with a-hootin' and a-hollerin' for stretches of white powder.

I don't like to be cold. I am ruined forever, a Southern California girl, raised to believe 60 degree weather required a heavy coat. The years we recently lived in Hawaii only thinned my blood for the worst.

And now on the East Coast, I have complained too much. I have checked the thermometer too many times. But as the snow falls, and the bedroom curtains outline my boys like superheroes, I savor these days like souvenirs of motherhood. I hush those complaints of bitter temperatures and make a choice.

I wonder like my boys. I dream of more days on the bullet speed sleds, the fancy ones we bought for days like this.

So out the door, to find the van and the truck, bandaged in snow.

 And to define our snow days with scooters and snow scrapers, carving out our own family memories...

...surveying the work of the snow blower; it huffs a growing wall of snow.

 

I wear my Boy Mom lenses. My spectacles, the ones that let me spy things I could not see, I would not see, if not on this very journey of Boy Mom. I see the boundless adventures, I see the superheroes, I see the make-believe turn into make-true.

The igloo they made with Dr. Romance three snow storms ago, with a tunnel addition built snow storm before this last, now rising to greet the morning. The igloo, the sugar loaf of an alp that is a stage for their imagination to run, the yard stick of how great is the snowstorm.

 

The same Wonder that draws my boys to the God-made of the snow covered igloo

draws me to the icicles that fortress our front porch.

The long cones that spiral like crystals, the ones that point straight to our welcome mat, that first greet outsiders. I eye them, measure them, inspect them. I wonder that they melt, grow, freeze, melt, grow, freeze over and over for days.

This year in New England is most probably a once in a lifetime experience for our family. We will move in June. I make a choice to see the beauty here now, even when the temperature seems to gnaw at my bones.

So today I will start my list and count the ways He loves.

#1 Sons that love to play the heroes

#2 Heavy snow falls that bring more sledding days

#3 Heavy snowfalls that build the igloo

#4 My Dr. Romance that considers snow play a family priority

#5 The baby that sits with me in the window as the others hurl snowballs at us

#6 Icicle crystals that hang like eye candy

#7 Neighbors that help snow blow our yard