Awakened one morning long ago by the whisper of silence, I rushed to my window and found the world snuggled under a white blanket.
By which I mean snow blanket.
The deepest snowfall I’d ever seen, it beckoned with promises of snowballs to hurl, forts to build, and a towering man eager to fix us with his icy stare.
Yes, I’m talking about a snowman.
Three of us neighborhood boys decided to build one of those carrot-nosed, charcoal-eyed fellers. Ours would be no regular snow-guy, though. No, we planned to build the biggest one you ever saw, a real snow Paul Bunyan, the kind Jack would need a beanstalk to visit. Because small boys are fascinated by big things, and anything worth doing deserves to be done right, we knew our snow Goliath would have to be mega-huge.
We started small, as even the most ambitious projects must, by packing one the size of a softball, then rolling it in circles across the ground, our eyes getting bigger while our snowball grew. Then as our handiwork gained even more weight, we discovered it got harder to push, and we began to realize there’s an art to making the perfect ball. It requires constant adjustment, calculating this way and that, twisting and turning to achieve near-perfect roundness. More than symmetry and esthetics, it became a practical matter. When a snowball begins to outgrow its makers, you have to be extra careful to avoid letting it form any flat spots or it simply won’t roll anymore.
Back and forth along the street, over neighbors’ lawns, up and down the driveways of grateful shovelers, we appropriated all the loose snow we could find, flouting all geographic and political boundaries, this ephemeral natural resource ours to be exploited.
Our base ready, next came the middle section. We repeated the process for the second level until we had another, not quite as big as the first but otherwise quite perfect—a remarkable achievement, we told ourselves. That’s when the laws of physics asserted themselves, those rules of nature that say small boys can’t lift huge snowballs, no chance, no way.
Other kids came over to help, neophyte engineers offering ideas more than brawn. We used boards for levers, built a ramp, pressed a red wagon into service, pulled with ropes, and actually had it somewhat off the ground several times, but all to no avail.
That’s when one of the wary-eyed local mothers came over and suggested we abandon our grand plans. Even if we could get our behemoth to stand tall, she warned, it would prove too dangerous. Our friendly snowman might inadvertently topple and crush some unsuspecting playmate.
There were murmurs of conjecture about how the police might arrest a murderous snowman. They’d haul him off for a frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful session of trying to obtain fingerprints, finally discovering the next day that he’d somehow eluded his captors, a mysterious puddle with charcoal and a carrot the only clues to his miraculous escape.
So Plan B kicked in. If we couldn’t have the world’s biggest snowman, then by gosh we’d make the world’s biggest ball.
By which I mean snowball.
So we pushed and pulled, dozens of kids—maybe thousands—all pitching in to help. We added little surprises to the layers, goodies and small toys, the stuff of pockets and junk drawers, building a time capsule that would slowly yield its treasures as our leviathan melted over the coming eons.
It came to rest in my front yard, the biggest snowball ever crafted. Word spread, and people traveled great distances to marvel at our accomplishment. I can’t say for sure how big it got because I was still fairly small and most of the world looked rather humongous from my point of view, but I’ll guess right now that it grew to at least ten, maybe fifteen storeys high, and unless you have photos to prove otherwise, I’m standing by my claim.
The snowball did last for eons, or at least until long after the blanket of winter had melted away, the freezer season yielding to those first hints of breezy springtime. It shrank, got rather lopsided, lost that former glory, and slowly revealed its long-forgotten hidden surprises. I’d like to think it held fast all summer, maybe until the next winter’s snows brought that familiar white playground back to town. Who knows?—maybe, even now, one might still find a small piece of it there in the shade after all these years . . .
But with everything man builds, nature ultimately takes it away. Highways crack and buckle, buildings crumble, bridges fall, and another generation builds its own monuments in their place.
I can’t say we learned much from our experience—maybe something about planning and design, thermodynamics and synergy, or pulling together as a team—but we did manage to have quite a ball . . .
Yes, I’m talking about a snowball.
There will always be snow, and there will always be children with grand ideas—even after they’ve grown up and maybe had a few kids of their own. We were convinced our snowball was something nobody had ever achieved, but records like that are made to be broken—maybe by you or the little ones you love!
So keep that in mind, and the next time you wake up to discover your world is snuggled under a white blanket . . .
Well, you get my drift.
By which I mean snow drift.
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