Winter ’75
This was hard work, and the boys had only one shovel. Martin had brought it. The whole thing was his idea. He – like only a few of the others – had skis. From his grandma. Long brown wooden skis with strange rounded tips and metal boot brackets and a very old wired clip binding.
The small sand quarry was echoing the laughter, shouts, and banter of the neighborhood boys. It had snowed overnight. Just a little. Enough for them to hope they could build a narrow slope. Narrow. For one skier in a straight line. One firmed track for the left ski, one for the right. One inch deep. Then the coarse sand of the quarry. The two tracks ended on a jump, a snow-dusted board, as smooth as they could find.
Martin went first. The first day of real winter. First snow. Not every year had a real winter. And the snow came less often and stayed shorter, year after year. But here it was. Not much, but here. Martin closed the wire bindings above the heel of the sole of his wet pigskin boots and jumped on the tracks, as he had seen on TV many times. He heard the sand and small pebbles scratch the wood of his skis. The fleeting thought: grandma will be upset about her old skis. Down in a straight line. All gazes on him. Velocity. Wind. Sounds of downhill. And a melting snow flake. Martin knew they were waiting for him to fall – before the jump or after. To leave the tracks. To stop before the jump. They knew he had fallen often. When playing ball. He was slow when running and clumsy when moving his arms.
The skis were different. He loved them. They gave him small wings, going down towards the jump in a perfect line. Without angst. With joy. And pride. The jump. In the air for longer than he had ever been in shoes. Landing in the sand. He turned around and looked at the other boys. His face under the tuque beamed like it had not in many months. It was the … snow.
2021-12-11 SD Writing / Creativity Group in Zoom
Any text. Any topic. Just with snow. That was the prompt. That’s how I remember it.
If you have the time and energy to read more of these texts you find them in blog order on this website. Let me know what you associate with them, what you like, what you dislike, what you read in them, how they make you feel …
Texterium 