Quite all right

By Christine Tailer
HCP columnist

I was 6 years old. I remember looking out the second-floor window to the street below. I told my father that things did not seem quite right. He came to the window and stood beside me and gently reassured me that snow, lots of snow, had fallen overnight, and that everything was just fine. I wondered how that could be when the whole world seemed completely buried.

"Come, I'll show you," was his calm reply. We dressed in multiple warm layers. My mother even placed brown paper bags around my socks before I slid my feet into my boots. My little brother tugged at our father's shirt sleeve and begged to join us. To my surprise, Mom acquiesced with a sigh. With the three of us going, she might as well venture outside with her silly family.

We all bundled up and were soon heading out the first-floor door, under the front stoop. The well at the bottom of the three steps was filled with snow. Dad had to shovel it out before we could get out to the sidewalk. Once there, he lay a large piece of cardboard on top of the snow and instructed my brother and me to climb aboard. He had tied a long loop of rope through two holes he'd punched through several layers of the doubled-over cardboard. 

I realized even as a child, that there were certain advantages to having a building superintendent for a father. There was nothing that he couldn’t fix, and nothing that he could not make to fit the occasion. Accordingly, with an endless supply of large cardboard boxes that had once housed 100 rolls of toilet paper, he had crafted the perfect toboggan. We were off.

It was the most perfect sleigh imaginable. My little brother sat between my legs. Our steed was our dear father. He trudged through the snow, some drifts easily thigh deep, while we rode on top of the drifts, gliding along the surface. Our mother was right behind. It was slow going.

We headed north along Second Avenue. No one was out. We had the city to ourselves. The cars parked along the side of the streets were completely covered and looked like giant white gumdrops. The world was so quiet.

I have no idea how far we went, perhaps only a few blocks, when our father turned around and began to retrace our path back to 17th Street. "Oh, let's go farther!" my brother and I cried.

Dad smiled and asked if I was all right. "Oh yes!" I replied, “Let’s keep on going!”

Dad smiled. "Ahh. Now you understand that even a lot of snow can be quite all right," and then I did understand. This was another one of our father’s wonderful lessons. I don't think I realized, however, how much effort it had taken for him to trudge through the snow and pull us on our sleigh ride lesson. We returned home.

This morning, I woke up and looked out the window at our creek valley world. Snow had started falling and was quickly accumulating. There was deep white everywhere I looked. The valley was thickly blanketed and more snow was still falling. I realized how quiet everything seemed when I let the dog outside, no creek sounds, no bird calls, even our hungry cattle were quiet.

I knew we had plenty of firewood stacked under the front porch. I had a fridge and deep freeze filled with lots of food, and I knew that once the farm chores were done, I could settle in at my work bench not far from the woodstove and happily sort through my marble collection, or maybe I'd even sit back in the reclining swing by the fire and read a while.

Yes. Dad's lesson held true. Even with a lot of snow covering our world, everything really is quite all right.

Christine Tailer is an attorney and former city dweller who moved several years ago, with her husband, Greg, to an off-grid farm in south-central Ohio. Visit them on the web at straightcreekvalleyfarm.com.