Spoons are for Snow

I was roused yesterday, as I am many mornings, by a kick in the lower back. This came courtesy of Thing 2 who had climbed into bed between me and My Love at some proper bar-closing hour for want of a snuggle and, as I truly believe, to disrupt my ongoing attempts at having dreamily soft-focused relations with that woman, Ms. Jennifer Love Hewitt.

(This was my subconscious's third attempt on her in 10 days. She's subliminally teasing me for fast-forwarding past her Proactive acne commercial so many times. Frustrating, yes, but it serves as fair warning for the future. I wouldn't want visions of her sugarplums dancing in my head to be overtaken by Billy Mays and his Awesome Auger.)

Shortly thereafter, Thing 1 burst through the bedroom doorway.

"It snowed last night! And IT'S STILL SNOWING!!"

Outside of our second-floor window, a thin layer of frosting has covered our world and, sure enough, an icy haze continued to shower down, clicking on the pane and the gutter just above.

Thing 1 been casting the snow spell for three weeks now. She does this by sleeping with her pajamas inside out while a plastic spoon rests under her pillow, just as one of her pre-school teachers told her and brother to do years ago whenever a chance of falling flakes filled the airwaves. Her invocations have been mostly ineffective possibly because, having run out of plastic spoons, she resorted to sticking a plastic fork under her resting head. (We did get flurries on our walk to school a week or so ago. When I stripped the sheets for washing later that morning, I recovered from her bed a school-cafeteria spork.)

In a few minutes, I was in the kitchen, zipping, buckling and barking requests for hats and gloves. Thing 2's eyes quickly welled with cries that his new snowsuit was too tight. I instructed him to take it off and try it again, this time with the zipper undone and in the front.

Some children burst into the season's first snowfall and quickly ball a handful to toss at the nearest object. Others start rolling the stuff up into a new frosty friend or piling it into an impenetrable fortress. A few go right on their backs and flap their limbs into heavenly impressions.

Mine -- armed with mixing bowls, rinsed out potato salad containers and the good soupspoons -- gather then shovel the virgin coldness straight into their mouths.

Their routine is to scoop all they can off the patio furniture. If parental supervision is lax, they move from the deck to any spot of lawn that looks unvisited by our dog. They proceed to gorge until their tongues and bellies are numb. Leftovers go into the freezer for hourly snacking until they are gone or transformed into an unbreakable solid chunk.

Sunday's feeding frenzy lasted about 30 minutes. By lunchtime, the precipitation turned to rain. The last jagged patches of the morning manna disappeared by 2 p.m.

Come bedtime, Thing 1 appeared in the living room wearing her typical winter nightwear: a Dallas Stars jersey and a purplish pair of PJ bottoms with monkeys chatting on the phone while lounging on crescent moons. Both are inside out.

"Girl, it's supposed to be in the 50s tomorrow. No chance of snow whatsoever," I said to her.

"That's OK," she said. "It won't hurt to try again."