Frosty

We have been visiting my parents in South Dakota. In my mind there are to types of visits with relatives. Those that go smoothly, and those in which all of the little idiosyncrasies of family drive one to drink (Unless one of the little idiosyncrasies is drinking in which case they drive you to find a meeting) I would categorize this trip as one of the former. However, one of the problems with visiting a place that is horrendously cold outside is that it makes me not want to go outside (unless of course the whole point of going to such a place is so that you can be outside i.e. skiing)

So I am trapped. Trapped in a prison of cold and ice and surrounded with all of the luxuries of my parents home: a well stocked fridge, cable TV, a huge house that the kids can run through without tripping over every single adult in the house, and three cars in the garage. Not that I want to go anywhere, after all I've been to malls, and everything else is covered in snow and ice.

I know that I am whining about having it too good, about having too much free time, after all isn't that what vacations are for? To get away from the routine and try someone-else's cooking for a while? But there comes a time when you begin to feel like a gerbil that has lived in the cage a little too long without anyone coming along to clean it. Not that I am not for wallowing in ones own crapulence, but that even this becomes, well, stagnant.

You know I think I am beginning to think that it is not too cold outside. I am encouraging J. to take a couple of the kids and go sledding tomorrow. There is even a little hill nearby where they can go skiing and snowboarding if they are feeling adventurous. But I haven't really thought too hard about what I would want to do. I'm feel a little too arthritic to go sledding or skiing. But a nice healthy walk might be just the thing. There are deer in parents back yard, so many that I would speculate that there are multiple herds. and there are squirrels so fat that you could mistake them for dogs, honest to god dogs.

However the thing I want to do most if I go outside is to build a snowman. Not any old snowman, but a very special snowman. For you see there is a small bronze statue in my parents backyard of a little boy pulling a wagon. The snow has covered the wagon and the boy simply stands there, with his arms crossed in front of him, standing as if he were waiting for something, and every time I walk by a window and catch this little boy out of the corner of my eye I would swear to Buddha that it was one of my children standing outside in their pj's looking all bronzen blue and frozen. I do a double take every time I see it, and have come to the decision that the little boy needs to become a little frosty the snowman with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal.

So I am going to bundle up, put on some warm mittens and tromp through the crunchy snow. The deer will scatter and the squirrels will most likely steal the corn right off of the pipe, but that little boy needs some winter wear. A little transformation for the season, after all, Don't we all? Isn't that what vacation really is, a chance to put on a different costume for a day or a week. To walk around in another man's shoes and see life from a new perspective. I think that statue needs to be a snowman even more than I need to make him one. That is my little idiosyncrasy of the day. Hopefully it won't wear on anyone too much... "hey where did that statue go and where did that little snowman come from?"