Yesterday morning, after sledding with the kids, I looked for a large pile of snow from my father-in-law’s plowing. I wanted to make an igloo for the kids to play in. Finding a corner with the snow piled a bit higher than elsewhere I began, enlisting the help of my two young children who periodically lost their gloves, requiring reattachment, and argued over who would get the preferred shovel, requiring negotiation and judgment. They lasted longer than expected, occasionally adding to the snow pile, but more often than not moving snow with no apparent aim. After an hour or so they went into their grandparents’ home for hot chocolate and to warm up. I continued to shovel.
I got tired and sometimes rested, but continued shoveling, remembering the handful of times that I could, when I had helped make an igloo as a child after a big snowfall. I remembered, as an older child, it was long work - and it still was. I remembered it could be hard work, and it was that too. It was still satisfying work - though I was now interested in the work and results, and not in playing in the igloo. I shoveled to build the outside, and dug and scraped to build the inside, until about ten minutes after being called for lunch. Lunch traditionally comes twenty minutes or more after I’m called for it - each party adjusting to the expectations of the other. When I came in I knew I was done, my pants caked in snow, my hands cold, and my time for “play” over. The igloo had a small front opening and a big interior space. I helped with the children’s meals, urging them to eat and rationing chips to be purchased by bites of sandwich. I put dishes in the dishwasher. I got my son to nap.
In the interim my grade school nephew came to visit and, seeing the igloo, set to work on creating a second opening. I thought to stop him, but didn’t. I did not have time to spend directing him and, with chores to do and younger children to watch, I suspected his work would not be to my liking. The kids played in and around the igloo the rest of the afternoon.
After dinner, with the table cleared I went out to see the opening. It was big. While the igloo would last for some time, the height of the new opening would hasten its end. More troubling, the wind would whip through, ending the warmth and peace, the isolation.
There is something sad in this altering of the igloo. To open it to some air takes nothing from its charm - a large, gaping hole that lets in much of the wind defeats my ideal, but not my nephew’s vision. His play was to take the igloo and create something different from it. Something the kids could go in and out of with greater ease. My nephew did the right thing in his way. An igloo cannot last in our American clime.
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