Despite the previous day's trickery of lobbing temperatures into the mid-60s, Thursday found me and Mama perched upon the couch at 6:30 a.m. staring forlornly at a March blizzard. My pout emerged from the cheating cold-front's cruelty at depriving me of a day's zipping up and down slide staircases, dangling from monkey bars, and wreaking havoc on the "perrty! peerrty fowah!" crocuses dotting the front lawn. Mama's pout emerged, I think, from my decision to nod off at midnight and emerge from the blankets pop-eyed and cheery at 6:15, demanding amongst other things, "Bus!" and "Mama! UP! MAMA UP!"
Mama rose to the occasion, rising not only from her bed but up a very steep hill at Lindsey Gardens whist toting both Asher's borrowed sled plus me, seeing as how the combination of diaper, onesee, flannel shirt, padded waterproof "snoveralls," a coat, and slightly-too large boots conspired to render my otherwise coordinated wiggly body an immovable mass of fabric reminiscent of Ralphie from *A Christmas Story*. I kept flopping over forward, making snow-devils with my face. This maddened me. Greatly. So Mama toted. And I noted, "Up! Up! Up!" Indeedy, up.
We arrived at the top of the hill and Mama inexplicably plunked me down on the front of this cheapo piece of plastic, sat her fat hiney behind me, looped a rope under my arms, instructed me 500 times to "hold onto Mama's legs," and started inching us forward. She briefly hesitated upon reaching the edge of the football field-sized precipice before us, glanced at the neighboring graveyard (SLC's biggest!) and muttered something about its ominous presence, our lack of a cell phone, and the utter dearth of other people anywhere in sight.
Then the crazy woman pushed us over the edge.
We careened. We barreled. We zoomed faster than my beloved buses or even, quite possibly, the fire-engines I so convincingly imitate 20 or so hours of each day. Then we turned sideways for a zippy view of the all-too-near gravestones. Mama's bum bum started playing snowplow as Asher's sled mutinied by facing back up the hill while continuing to descend at quite a snappy, sonic-boom inducing clip. (Or maybe that was just Mama.)
Finally, after a long skid on the level ball-field at the bottom of Panic Peak, we came to rest and toppled off. Mama jumped up, ran 'round to the front of the sled, tilted my face in her hands and implored, "Muffin? Muffin honey, are you OK? Muffin?"
I met her with a look of wide-eyed unmitigated terror.
Then, as she visibly self-flagellated for risky parenting, my gaping mouth of horror slowly turned into a gigantic grin.
I raised my be-mittened hand.
I pointed upward.
I loudly demanded . . .
"MORE!"
4 comments:
Great story! How many more times did you venture up and down?
hehe That was wonderful! Thanks for sharing. I forget that it is still winter in Utah . . . there was next to no snow when we left. That sounds like so much fun! I wish I could have gone. I miss you guys!
That was so cute! Particularly the hat. My question is, were *you* excited about the second trip, or had your downward-bound visions of death and dismemberment made you unhappy with the prospect of repetition?
We went down about five times total, I think. Muffin needed to pause at the top of each ascent and eat generous quantities of snow then lob some in my face, so five trips took quite the while.
I actually had a ball, Froggy. Every time the sled turned around backwards I got a little worried that we'd tumble off and he'd get too scared, but it never happened. I do wish Muffin had paid attention to my "hold on" advice though--I wound up holding one arm all the way round his chubby tummy while trying to steer with the other.
Once we finished sledding, Muffin STILL insisted on playing on the merry-go-round and two slides, on which he of course was a bum snow-plow. It took a lot to convince him to come home, even though his little nose was like unto a cherry.
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