Snow Day

Snow Day

    The photograph is one that I don’t remember, but the memories from this time come flooding back to me as I look at it.  I am a child in the photo, no more than two or three years old, sitting in front of my dad on an old snowmobile.  He’s wearing a one piece snow-suit circa 1985.  It’s bright blue, with patches of neon pink and green all over it.  To be quite honest, he looks absurd.  I have on a small, all white, coat and a pair of black cover-all snow pants.  This photo brings back only a vague memory of snowmobiling with my dad, (we never went out riding all that often, he thought it was too dangerous.  What else can you expect from an ER nurse?) and my grandpa.  The engine kept me warm despite the wind which seemed to shred right through whatever warm clothing I wore, turning bone to ice.  I had a little hand grip running parallel in to the main handle-bar set that had a padded cover on it stating that it was Polaris or some other famous snowmobile brand. 
    In the photo, we are at my grandparents’ cabin in Island Park, Idaho.  I remember we used to try and get up there at least once every summer and once every winter to do all sorts of recreational things.  The cabin is large, and identical to every one of the trees that grow around the cabin, tall skinny firs I believe.  I can’t tell for sure, but it’s not relevant.  The reason for the cabin being identical to the trees is because it is.  My grandpa built it with his own hands. 
    One of the memories that sticks out to me the most from my winters up there, is what my grandpa used to do when the snow would build up too high on the roof.  You see, if the snow collects too heavily on the top of the roof it will collapse, just like a gingerbread house under the weight of a child’s greedy hands, so he would have to get it off somehow.
    He used to climb up with a shovel and, standing at the top of the roof where the two sides connect, start slashing at it with the shovel until it gave way.  You would hear  a loud cracking and a large chunk of ice and snow would go sliding down.  He would ride it whooping and hollering, just like it was a large frozen bull.  He would then land, laughing, in a large snowy heap.  The matador stepping away from his kill.  Then it would be up the ladder once more to repeat the routine.
    He died a few years later of a case of lung cancer that had spread to his spine.  He didn’t even smoke.  The doctors say that it must have been some asbestos from when he was an independent handyman.
    So it goes.
    My grandmother got a brain tumor a few years after that, but she survived.  She’s now in an assisted living home prematurely.  They say that all of the chemo going straight to her brain caused her to develop dementia.  She still claims that he visits her every night after everyone else is asleep.
    I took the old photo out to show to my dad.  He thought that I was my sister.