Stories of My Childhood: Winter Fun

I lived in the perfect spot for winter fun when I was growing up. There was a small pond directly across the street from our house that was a great ice skating pond. We lived at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, so my sister and I could lace up our skates in the warmth of the kitchen, then put on our skate guards and carefully walk on the edge of the neighbor's lawns and down through the reedy bank to reach the ice. There were enough hockey-loving boys in the neighborhood that someone had usually shoveled the snow off a good-sized patch of ice by the time we were ready to skate. My mom could see us from the living room window, so we didn't even have to wait until one of my folks was available to chaperone us after we reached a certain age. My dad was a pretty good skater, so he spent hours skating backwards, first holding us up and dragging us across the ice and eventually just helping us with balance a little. Finally he showed us how to spin around so WE were skating backwards and HE was skating forwards. Neither my sister nor I was ever going to be a candidate for the Ice Capades, but we certainly learned to keep ourselves upright and even be reasonably graceful on the ice.

If we were in the mood to sled rather than skate, we had a small sledding hill right in our own backyard. At the back of our house, the yard was flat for a ways (enough space for a large clothesline and a small swing set), then there was a hill about 20 feet across and maybe 6 feet tall that led to an upper section of yard that had space for a full-sized volleyball court or croquet game, plus a generous-sized vegetable garden. It was just a little hill so you only got a short ride on the sled, but the up side was that it wasn't that hard or time-consuming to pull your sled back to the top for your next run. We had a series of different styles of sleds over the years, mainly something called a "Slide-a-Boggan" that was just a big thin plastic rectangle with a handle at the front that rolled up like a carpet to store it in the garage.

But my favorite sled was the big aluminum "flying saucer" with two canvas handholds, kind of like a very smooth trashcan lid. 

We sometimes waxed the bottom with the same chunk of paraffin that my dad used on the aluminum snow shovels to stop the soft snow from sticking. That sled was fun because not only did you slide down the hill very fast, you also spun around like a top while going down!

But the best and biggest sledding hill in town was right up the street. 

[Author's Note: This is the actual hill I sledded on as a child.]

Technically we could have walked there from our house, but we usually drove because that's where we went sledding when both my parents came along and we brought the toboggan. It was a beautiful, long, shiny wooden sled that was big enough for the whole family, and it even had a steering mechanism of sorts (although one of somewhat dubious effectiveness). 

We always stacked in weight order, with Dad at the back, then mom, then my sister, and finally me at the front, with my muffler carefully wrapped across my face so I didn't end up with a faceful of snow by the time we reached the bottom (also of somewhat dubious effectiveness). Due to the weight of all four of us, the toboggan tended to get bogged down unless the snow was either very well packed or quite icy, which meant the perfect conditions for SPEED! The hill was high enough that you built up quite a bit of speed by the bottom, and there wasn't a lot of straightaway to slow you down before you reached a few bushes and then slid directly into the street, or at least the parked cars lining it. I never heard of anyone going into the street and getting hurt, but I suspect that more than a few cars every winter gained a dent on the lower part of the passenger side door. When it wasn't icy enough for the toboggan, we would often bring two sleds and tandem down, usually me with Dad and my sister with Mom. (I suspect the main reason for the tandem was that I was little enough to struggle with climbing back to the top of the hill, and my dad preferred to manage one sled and one small child rather than two sleds and one small child.)

Of course, the best part of any of these outings was getting back home and having hot cocoa. If Mom hadn't been outside with us, she would see us coming and start making the cocoa while we peeled off all our winter gear. That usually consisted of a bulky parka, heavy snow pants with suspenders, mittens on a string running through the sleeves so we wouldn't lose them (or at least we'd lose both of them at once), a knitted snow hat (made by the loving hands of one of my grandmothers), and a long scarf. If we were sledding, our feet would be warmly layered in two pairs of socks, a Wonder Bread bag with the top folded over so the red, yellow, and blue polka-dots showed, and finally our snow boots.  

[Author's Note: These are not my actual feet.]

By the time we had extricated ourselves from all those layers, the cocoa had been poured into a big mug and topped with either marshmallows or a large dollop of Marshmallow Fluff, and was often accompanied by a freshly baked cookie. What part of childhood could possibly be better than that??

Sledding and Snow Angels

One of the best things about parenthood is reliving your own childhood. And winter is one of the best times to relive your childhood.

I grew up in one of the best winter places in the entire world. Not only did I grow up in New England, where the snowy winters provide the best sledding weather ever, but I grew up across the street from the perfect ice-skating pond, and not only did we have a small hill in our backyard that worked in a pinch for sledding, but we lived within walking distance from the best sledding in town.

Nun’s Hill was arguably the ideal sledding spot. It was high enough that you got a really long ride, steep enough that you got a really great ride, had enough of a flat area before the road that you could USUALLY stop before either crashing into a parked car or careening into the road, and it was enough work to walk back up the hill that the kids pooped out just around when the parents had had enough and were ready to head for home. And of course, Mom always had hot cocoa with marshmallows waiting for us by the time we managed to take off all our snow gear.

Oh, the snow gear. The snow pants with the little bib and the suspenders. The mittens that zipped tight over your sleeves. The hat that tied under your chin and had earflaps. The snow boots. And of course, the Wonder Bread bags with the multi-colored polka-dots that went inside your boots so your socks wouldn’t get wet when the snow inevitably crawled inside your boots. Oh, those were the days.

Today, as I was getting my kids dressed in all their layers to go sledding, I was thinking back to my own childhood. As I watched my husband pulling my daughter back up the hill on her sled, I recalled my own daddy pulling me and my sister up the hill on our wooden toboggan. As I sat down to race my son down the hill – the first time my middle-aged backside had graced a sled in over 20 years - I remembered how excited we were when my mom would join our sledding excursions. As I looked at the lineup of big and small boots dripping on the hallway runner, I was brought back to the brown plastic boot mat by the backdoor in my parents’ house. As I warmed up my daughter’s chilly pink cheeks with my own warm ones, I recalled both of my parents rubbing my cold hands with their warm ones.

And as my son and I made matching snow angels in the snow, I thought of my parents, looking down on me from above and laughing. I’m sure they were remembering the same memories that I was. And I hope that many years from now, as my children play in the snow with their own children, they will be thinking back to memories that are as joyful and precious as the ones I’m thinking about today.