that one special winter day, or two . . .

I told the 9TS that after lunch with my buds, I wanted to nest in front of a fire, imbibe some wine, and snuggle up. Turns out we did our snuggling first and fell asleep. Ate. And roasted. So nice as the temperature dives into the 20's. Remind me again what state I live in! And so it made me think about my childhood and that one special winter day . . .

It had snowed the day before and almost a foot and a half of the fluffy white stuff was all about. And then suddenly, it warmed and rained and just as suddenly, the temperatures plummeted again and the rain froze on the snow creating an ice crust. At first we tried walking on it and discovered to our utter delight that it held our weight . . . and we slip slided around. Then someone got the brilliant idea to put on our skates and see if we could skate on it. To our 11 year old collective amazements, we could and did. We skated down the road. We skated across the yard. We skated on the snow across the frozen lake. The very best was gliding down the slope of our backyard, picking up speed and sailing over the retaining wall onto the lake. Take that you southerners! We spent the entire day outside until frozen toes and red drippy noses demanded that we head inside for the waiting hot chocolate and cookies. Do childhood memories get any better?

Oh wait, another one just popped up to say 'don't forget about me!" Do you know what black ice is? If you don't, your childhood was severely lacking. Black ice forms on a lake that has frozen before the first snowfall. It's a rare phenomenon since snow usually falls long before the ice has frozen thick enough to skate on, making it bumpy and crusty and needing to be shoveled. And what skating it was. Smooth, unblemished ice from one end of the lake to the other, black as night. Lolly and I were about nine years old the day we sat in my basement lacing up our skates and duck walking on our scabbards down to the dock. What an enormous skating rink we had . . . one mile long and 1/2 mile wide. We spent hours skating up and down and across the lake . . . joining spontaneous hockey games, drifting along with the wind, playing whip, stopping now and then to collect or drop off more friends, scarring the ice with figure eights, doing a couple of proverbial face plants. It was the perfect day that winter and for many more to come.

One of the lovely advantages of getting long in the tooth is all the fabulous memories to keep your heart company while nestled in front of a roaring fire while the 9TS watches the Vikings trounce the Phillies . . .