Winter Interrupted

I want my boys to believe me, to take me at my word, to hedge their bets that I am telling the truth. It is painful to hear my sons ache, to long for other days. I am surprised at how this New England cold with its sinking teeth has bothered them. As a boy mom I mistakenly thought they would brush off the bitter cold.

This Massachusetts winter has been brutal. It has been record long, record cold, and brimming with snow. This meteorologists say this winter has been unlike any other winter in years. When the snow falls my boys forgive the temperatures, throwing on snow boots, jumping into snow pants, finding lost snow gloves. But for the days when the mercury barely creeps past the numbers the weather has been wild.

This is all new for them. They are spoiled to only remember warm childhood days lived in Hawaii and California. My boys are used to sweatshirts when the temperatures dip below 70. But every day for three months they have packed snow pants, snow gloves, and snow boots shoved deep into a bulging bag slung next to their backpacks. My heart hurt the most for them one -25 degree school day.

A few weeks ago the eldest shed tears for San Diego winters. When will the cold stop? His otherwise olive skin is chalk white and dry. His hands show chapping from the days he chose not to wear the gloves. I pulled him close as we stared out the window from the second floor, protected from single digit temperatures. We stood staring down at the snow hedge at least 100 feet long. I want you to remember this, I told him, as I pulled back the curtain. We stared down at birds perched on a six foot towering wall of snow that ran like a sterile hospital corridor between our house and the next.I told him that God had not forgotten the little birds in winter. Even in this deep snow He sees them, and He provides their food. How He cares even more for us, and how He knows we need spring to come quickly.

Wow, I want him to remember the metaphor, and not just the literal example. I can't impress that upon his six year old mind. All I can bank on is that he will remember the day we stood at the window, when it seemed there was no hope for spring to show up in Massachusetts. I want him to remember that God sends the spring even when we feel in the dead of winter. He doesn't forget the seasons. He holds time.

Just the other day the snow fell and I could not find him anywhere. I peeked outside, and there he was, eager to live in this season. He forgot the temperature, he forgot his snow gloves, again. But he lived this season, pinching the sleeve of his jacket, scraping the snow.

And just a couple of days later, when there seemed no end to winter, the Author of the Seasons sent a day in the mid 40s for the first time in months. The snow melted. The jackets were left inside, and my boots were borrowed.

I caught the birds singing. Their melodies were loud and echoed around the neighborhood.

 

The squirrels appeared out of thin air, flying from branch to branch, chasing one another like a game of boys chase girls in the school yard.

So we celebrated the vanishing snow with melting snowmen. We spread the dissolving snow on the cookies, squished those sinking snowmen down, and laughed as we imagined their sadness.

And the big boys hands, the ones that scraped the snow with chapped fingers, happily danced in that pretend vanished snow.