Hoarfrost

Some words are like a long forgotten scent. The moment you smell it, it brings back a flood of memories and with them, emotions. I stumbled upon hoarfrost in one my books of words and a punch of nostalgia swept me back to my childhood, the old house, on rural route 2.

The word burning furnace in the basement blithely belching up heat through the vents. The windows have an icy bite on our noses. My little sister and I tugging at our snowsuits in the closet, eager to trade mobility of limbs for a chance to play in the snow.

The smell of the polyester lining and fiberfill of the snowsuits, the cotton of our gloves, the wool in our caps. The must from the lining and rubber of our snow boots. The comedy of trying to turn the round brass door knob with our gloved hands. The cool smell of concrete, sawdust, gas and oil from the garage. The burst of cold when the garage door opened, our eyes squinting from all the light.

The first few steps, timid, testing, a turn in the direction of the wind, feeling the pink in our cheeks rise to meet the icy breeze. We scramble to the front yard, everything is white. Across the driveway the barn and the garden sit stoically, dusted with a fine sheen of white.  We reach the top of hill where we throw ourselves down upon the ground, expecting a glorious glide to the bottom.  We are stuck, not enough snow.

We roll down the hill like in the summer when the grass is dry and the breeze is just so. We topple over each other, laughing, resting halfway down the hill. On our backs, we watch the sky and listen to the breeze in the skeletons of the woods. We could go and walk the trails, up along the high path, past the ironwood tree, around the back of the house. Or the low path that followed the tream from the York's pond. We could go off trail in the back to the field where deer liked to graze.

Instead we just layed there, watching our breath rise from us like the smoke stack at lone-star industries.  Listening to the wind play in the branches, fly across the icy grass of the yard. Feeling the cold starting to seep in at the seams around the neck, ankles and wrists. The rush of air in our lungs as it enters cold and sharp and leaves warm and moist.

And then the light crinkle crunch of the hoarfrost underfoot as we got up and headed towards the backyard. Leaving a backwards trail of footprints to the soft imprint of two small bodies on the side of a hill; their tumbling impressions rising upwards and disappearing over the top of the hill.