It was quite the fuss getting eight children out the door to go sledding.
First there was the gathering. Snow pants, boots, jackets, gloves and hats, followed by the extra care of tugging and pulling on all the bulk in a warm home.
Plus, there was a time goal. I had gone ahead to make sure the hill at the junior high was still covered with snow. Over time, the snow wears down revealing larger and larger patches of grass. From the time I gave the heads-up, we'd allotted twenty minutes to be on the road.
It was joyful bustle.
One by one, we exited through the garage and waited until everyone had joined in the driveway.
"Grab the sleds," someone suggested.
There were no sleds.
Tony reminded me that I had cleaned the outside closets out last year and given all the sleds to charity or to our daughter who now stored them in her garage and got more use than if left stacked on our shelves. Tony and I haven't gone sledding with each other for years. Two sixty-year-olds just don't wake up on the first snow day and say, "Let's go sledding." We ask, "Who's going to shovel" and say, "Remember to take out the garbage."
So there we were. All fourteen of us ready to sled without a sled in sight.
I remembered my son-in-law just telling the story of his college days, and taking baking sheets to the closest fresh-snow covered hills. A college student with limited funds doesn't run to Target but instead becomes resourceful and pulls out the cookie sheets.
Tony nixed the idea as he didn't want his baking sheets cracked.
Cardboard boxes! The poor man's sled. With a plethora of amazon drop offs in recent weeks, we had plenty of cardboard boxes. My embarrassed children nixed the idea..I packed them in the car anyway.
The only hope was that our daughter who was meeting us, would have plenty of sleds. She did! The day was saved.
And so it goes. Almost any day can be saved. Or as a beloved cousin, a top designer in a large metropolis used to say, "There's nothing that can't be fixed."
Merry Christmas.
May all your days have sleds.
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