Table of Contents Table of Contents
Previous Page  32 / 70 Next Page
Information
Show Menu
Previous Page 32 / 70 Next Page
Page Background

CEDARVILLE

REVIEW

32

Making Mountains out of

Snow Mounds

nonfiction By Sharon Rose

After the snowplow, the parking lot was rimmed with four or five feet glistening in the sun. They

called to us with their peaks, an amalgamation of snow and pavement chunks.

I hoisted you on top by your armpits, and I straightened your knitted butterfly cap over your ears.

Stay in the middle, stay close to me.

We were mountain climbers, explorers, trying to make it across an impossible expanse from the

Crook’s farm to the vegetable garden behind the parsonage. Our breath froze in the air, hovering

in fog before dispersing—we could only see each puff for a decimal of a moment.

You kept tugging your hands away—you wanted to bend your caked mittens in just the right way so

that the snow would grid and crack along the knitted lines, perfectly geometrical. Stay over here,

please, I mean it. You’re going to fall.

Then the mountaintops grew shorter and shorter until we were only a foot above the ground. And

then you were just a little kid shivering in the cold and clinging to my damp jean leg, and I was the

one who could save you.

I managed to push you back inside the glass doors and into the foyer by the wall of Missionaries,

leaving the slush and frozen ground behind us.

And then I kneaded your hands until their color—and the light in your eyes—returned.