A Snowy Day

As the light of the day turns to darkness, I trudge my way through the snowy field with a sled on my head. All I can focus on is putting one foot in front of the other. I’m hungry and exhausted. All I want to do is get back to the warm and cozy house, now all illuminated by the Christmas lights that just turned on. But first, I must trek my way through the small little pathway we created that morning, in the foot of snow that had fallen last night.

*****

None of us expected this much snow, not even my weather aficionado grandpa. As we all sat on the couch and listened to my grandpa read us “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”, snow was falling outside. It was more of a drizzle of snow than a blizzard, so we weren’t expecting much. We were all wishing for a white Christmas, but we all expected a blanket of snow covering everything was going to be all we got.

*****

Man, I wish it was a blanket of snow as much fun as this is, I think to myself, now more cold than anything else as the snow in my boots starts to melt. I hear laughter in the background as my uncle falls off his sled while doing one last run down the hill on the sledding run. I set the sled down to lift up the heavy metal cattle gate to get into the backyard. As I’m opening the gate, my cousin’s dog comes flying over to me from the sledding hill. He’s also ready to get inside the warm house. I pick up the sled and continue making my way through the snow towards the house, where I can see all of the decorations and lights on the inside through the window.

As I continue to walk through the snow in my grandparents’ backyard, I realize how dehydrated I am after sledding all afternoon. I slowly make my way to the boot room to take off all of the layers that I have on. As I open the door and step into the house, the warm air hits my cold cheeks, immediately thawing my face. As I’m defrosting, everyone else comes inside to defrost too. The house, once quiet, is now loud. My grandparents' house is always loud when I’m there with cousins, but that’s just because it’s full of life. We all take our wet layers off and put on dry clothes, and then gather in the living room. My cousin sits down next to me. We immediately start to reminisce on the fun afternoon of sledding.

Soon, dinner’s ready. The smell of the food makes me even more hungry after sledding. After dinner, all of us cousins crash into the TV room and put on a Christmas movie to watch. We all start debating which one to watch.

“Let’s watch Elf!” my cousin says enthusiastically.

“No, Home Alone!” another cousin shouts.

“Kids, let’s quiet down in here,” our grandma says walking into the room to look something up on the computer. We all burst into laughter because we didn’t see her enter the room and much less expected her to make a comment on our arguing.

*****

After much deliberation, we landed on watching Home Alone. As we watched the movie, we all started to pipe up and make funny remarks about Kevin McCallister and his plans to stop the home invaders.

It was one of those moments where you knew that this was going to be something that you talk about years from now, in a “remember that one Christmas…” type of way.

*****

One of my aunt’s comes into the room and tells us that it’s snowing outside. We all run to the window and look outside. My aunt is right. The snow is falling fast and quickly piling up on top of the snow already on the ground. All of the sudden, one of my cousin’s opens the door and runs out into the snow with his socks on and jumps in the snow. That sparks the idea for the rest of us, as we all start running and jumping off the deck into the snow. As my cousins and I play in the snow, all of the parents watch us from the living room window. The snow is falling hard all around us, but we don’t care about being cold and wet again. It feels like a memory that will last a lifetime. One that we’ll all talk about when we’re all old and gray.