writing prompt: i knew there was a reason why i hate snow

I haven't loved snow for years. Since I was about eleven, actually. I will always remember one particular Christmas Eve. Pretty much since I outgrew Santa Claus, family tradition had it that we got together at our house on Christmas Eve, went to midnight mass (except for my father, who had a nap on the couch in the meantime), came back to enjoy my mom's and my aunt's great cooking, and unwrapped our presents at two or so in the morning before heading to bed. Even though we were at home, and our guests were my mother's sister and her husband and two kids, we all dressed up for the occasion. Nice dresses, nylons, dressy shoes - the works.

So this particular year, my mother, my aunt, my two cousins and I crammed ourselves into our sky blue Toyota Corolla and headed out to church, about a mile away. The evening was grey and heavy, but not too chilly. We attended midnight mass and skittered out of church an hour later, anxious to get home and start the festivities. I use the term skittered since that's pretty much what we all did the second we set foot onto the front steps. The freezing rain probably began to fall the second we were all inside, for by the time we emerged, it had already stopped, leaving the entire town coated in a thin sheet of ice.

I should mention that my home town has a hill at one end and a dip in the middle. My mother was always a skittish driver, but this was simply beyond her abilities. We tried one road; fortunately, we were completely alone when he failed to make it up the hill and proceeded to slowly skid back down to our starting point. We tried another. This time, it was my mother who backed off, convinced that we would be unable to control the car's descent and that we were doomed to smash into the old train overpass if we tried. She parked the car back in the church parking lot and declared that we were going to have to walk home. In our dresses, nylons and dress shoes.

We slipped and slid along as best we could, until we got to the parking lot right in the hill where the train passes overhead. At this point, I had begun to understand my mother's fear; I wasn't sure I would be able to make it down that short stretch of sidewalk without doing a faceplant. So much so, in fact, that I pulled my winter jacket as low as it would go under my bottom, and simply slid down the hill without the benefit of a Crazy Carpet. It ruined my nylons, but I was otherwise intact. My mother and aunt had a go at it standing up; if memory serves me correctly, one finished on her derrière as myself, the other had at least a hand on the ground, and may have completed the maneuver facing backwards. The boys instead opted for crossing the street and tramping down the low snowbank that had accumulated there on previous nights. Other than the incline on the other side of this dip, the rest of the trip was uneventful, other than the fact that by the time we got home, our fingers were numb from grabbing any railing, post or icy surface we could to stay upright.

My father had a bemused look on his face when he saw us walk in, and asked us what had taken us so long with a smirk. Nonetheless, the fire in the fireplace may have been the cosiest I've ever experienced, and the rest of that particular Christmas went off as planned, without a hitch.

So what does this have to do with snow? Well, not much at first glance. But it marks the start of my not appreciating winter as a whole. I could also relate the times I tried skiing, or snowboarding, or the time my mother broke her wrist when I tried to teach her to skate. Let's just leave it at "I'm not made for winter climes." If I could hibernate, I would. If I could have a beach house in the Caribbean, I would.

Tonight, my plans have gone awry; I'm waiting for the tow truck to come pull my car out from its forty degree angle in the snowy ditch (although, now that I look at it, it's not a ditch, it's simply the other side of the snowbank.) And as I stand here by the side of the deserted road, I remember: I knew there was a reason why I hate snow.

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