49 Sliding

"Son!  Son!”

I blinked up at my father, still more than half asleep.  “Wha...”

“It snowed last night.  Come and see!”

He pulled at my arm, pointing towards the window.  I clambered out of bed, beginning to catch something of his enthusiasm.  As I put my feet into my slippers my sister appeared at the door.

“Have you seen it?!” she squealed, jumping up and down.

“Not yet,” I said, “but I’m about to.”

My tone belied the bubble of excitement that was beginning to build up in my stomach.  Snow!  I had never seen real snow in my ten years of existence; even my parents spoke of it as something rare during their lifetimes.  I stepped across the room to my window and looked out.  For a moment, I thought I had lost my sight because outside there was nothing, a blank whiteness that frightened me.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” sighed my father.

I stared up at him, this big, gruff, practical man, suddenly misty-eyed with wonder.  When I looked back at the scene outside, I saw it as he did, a thing of rare delight.

“Right, you two!” he cried, suddenly himself again.  “Put on your warmest clothes.  And your wellies!  Your mother will have a fit if you get colds because your feet got wet.  Don’t just stand there!  We have to be the first to slide down the hill!”

He pointed to the slope that rose up behind the little cluster of houses where we lived with our few neighbours.  My sister twirled around three times, so full of excitement I thought she might burst, then scurried off to her room.  I turned to my chest of drawers and began pulling out jeans and jumpers, as my father left the room.

A few minutes later, the three of us stood in the kitchen as my mother inspected us.  “OK, you’ll all do,” she said with a smile.  “I’ll have breakfast ready when you get back.”

We headed outside, the snow crunching beneath our booted feet.  My sister and I waited, too excited to feel the cold, while our father rummaged around in the shed for... something...  We had no idea what.

“Daddy!  Hurry up!” cried my sister, pointing down the single street.  I looked in that direction and saw people emerging from the other houses.

I added my voice to hers, excitement now tinged with an edge of panic.  “We need to get going, Dad, or we won’t be the first!”

“I’ve got it!  I’ve got it!”  Our father re-emerged from the shed holding a sheet of wood.  “I knew it was in there, somewhere.  Come on!  I’m not letting that lot beat us.”

Being on the end house had never seemed like such a blessing before.  We scrambled up the hill, slipping on the snow but making progress.  At the top, we took a moment to look down.  Almost all our neighbours were following our tracks, carrying sheets of wood like ours, or metal or plastic – anything that would provide a barrier between warm backsides and cold snow.

Our father got us seated on his sheet of plywood and looked at the neighbours just cresting the hill.  “Ha!  We’ll see you all at the bottom!” he shouted, sitting down himself and pushing off.

I had my arms around my sister and our father had his around both of us.  The wind blew, icy and exciting, into our faces, leaving us breathless – and yet, somehow, all three of us were screaming at the top of our lungs almost drowning out the swish of our passage over the virgin snow.  We were wrapped in our own tiny blizzard, the wood throwing up a stream of snowflakes, so any exposed skin was stung by specks of ice, but we barely felt them. 

Our makeshift sledge bumped over hidden rocks, divots and clumps of grass, almost bouncing us off at one point, but we clung to each other and trusted our strange vehicle to keep us on board.  And suddenly, we were at the bottom of the slope, a tangled heap of arms and legs.

My sister was the first to extricate herself and began bouncing up and down.  “Again!  Again!”

Our father laughed.  “OK, but let’s get out of the way.”

He nodded at the slope, down which several other sledges of various types were now making their way towards us.  We grabbed ours, and hurried back to the path made by our neighbours’ feet, untroubled by the climb because it would be eclipsed by the thrill of the slide.