Dreams and Fears

Today it started to snow as I was doing the dishes for my mom, I watched out the window in front of the kitchen sink forgetting what I was supposed to be doing at that moment. I stared in awe at the tiny beautiful sculptures made out of snow for about 5 minutes before my mom told me to continue doing my chores. When I finished I went into the living room and just sat at the window looking at all the snowflakes. I would love to be out there but my dad won’t let me because it’s too cold for me right now. 

  After about an hour of it snowing I wanted to go outside really badly and end up going over to my siblings to ask if they can help me convince my dad to let us go outside before it gets dark. After about ten minutes of annoying my siblings to help me convince him they gave in and came with me. We headed over to where my dad was and I realized he was starting a fire in the fireplace.

I got nervous for a second because he was busy and I was sure he didn’t want to be bothered. My siblings and I still asked anyway, and after a few minutes of giving reasons on why he should let us outside he finally said “fine.” Which made my sister and I really happy, but my brother would have cared less I’m pretty sure. We all bundled up in our heavy jackets and snow pants, about to go outside into the wonderland of falling snow and frozen lakes, rivers and even the smallest creeks. 

On the way out my cat pawed at my sleeve because he thought I was leaving him behind. I said in a sweet voice “don’t worry I’ll be back,” then gave him a small hug. We walked out the door and were immediately greeted by a cold gust of wind from the north. Which felt amazing and weird at the same time. We went down to the bank of the creek behind our house. I was very nervous while we looked at it. I didn’t want to fall onto the ice and it would break beneath me, that would be terrible. Eventually I convinced my siblings to go build a snowman with me because there was enough snow to. 

After a while of building our snowman it looked like just a pile of snow with two sticks in it so we tried again in a different area. Our mom came out when we were making the second one and she asked how we were doing out here and if we were cold. We assured her that we weren't too cold and wanted to continue. I then told her about our first snowman who didn’t turn out very well. She told us that practice makes perfect and that we shouldn’t give up on our snowman. After she went inside I went back to help my siblings with him and he already looked much better than the other one did earlier. I was happy about that. 

My siblings dragged me back to the frozen over creek after we finished our snowman but I didn’t want to go again. This time they got really close and the dog even started running around on the ice which seemed perfectly stable to hold her, which made me feel better until I realized I am twice the weight as the dog who is already 60 pounds. I backed up again and told my siblings that we should leave before we fall in. They reluctantly agreed and we went up to the play set on the other side of our house.

 It was covered in snow by now and was almost completely white. It was so cool to look at that for a few seconds I didn’t even want to touch the snow, I just wanted to stare at it in awe. It’s quiet beauty caught my attention and it made me remember about the many times in the past where we would sit by the fireplace and read a story as the snow fell silently outside. It was like some beginning of a story book that night. It gave me a sense of longing but a sense of happiness as well. It made my heart warm as I closed my eyes and thought of the times we’d woken up to snow and been so excited about it and about the times we would run out during recess at school and the boys would try to make igloos. Sometimes they turned out pretty well and others didn’t. You see I always dreamed about these times whenever winter came around and the snow wouldn’t fall. Although they were disappointments they made my imagination run wild on what we would do if it had fallen that year. 

I was shaken back into reality when my brother yelled out “Watch me, watch me!” I looked up to see him on the top of the playset about to go down the slide into all the snow at the bottom. He seemed very happy that I looked at him. He raced down the slide into a great big pile of snow and as soon as he got up he already had a snowball in his hand which is when I realized what he was about to do.  I cried out in a cheerful voice as if I was scared that he had a snowball which made him giggle. As he was distracted I crouched down and grabbed a snowball for myself and tossed it at him. My sister then noticed what was happening and she grabbed a snowball of her own and also threw it at my brother who wasn't laughing anymore. He threw his snowball at me and fell to the ground to make as many as possible before he got double-teamed by my sister and I. After my brother had initially done it I fell to the ground and made some snowballs and so did my sister, but I told her to work on a fort for us to protect us from oncoming snowballs. As the snowballs flew by so did the hours, soon enough we had spent two hours on a small snowball fight between only three people.

By the end we were all exhausted and layed down in the top of the play set laughing about how we had just spent so long on a snowball fight. My sister eventually said she wanted to go inside because she was cold and wanted hot chocolate, we said see you later and she left. My brother and I sat there for a few minutes a little bored until finally he broke the ice saying “do you want to go to the creek?” I accepted because the ice at the creek seemed to be frozen enough for at least him to stand on it, probably not me though so I told him I wasn’t going on the ice. He seemed fine with that though. 

It took us a few minutes to head down to the creek because of the tall grass around it but as soon as we got down there my brother got on it without even testing the ice. He started sliding away and soon gained control of where he was going and did small tricks to show off. Then he started sliding off, I called after him to slow down so I could follow from the side of the creek and he yelled out “Get on the ice to be faster if you want to catch up!” and he started going faster away down the creek gliding over the ice as if he was born to be an ice skater. 

After a few deep breaths I looked out on the ice remembering when I had done this in the past, how much fun it was and that I didn’t get too badly hurt. I was still always afraid of the ice though, I’ve never known why. Yet even through that fear I still had a dream to skate and do something cool on ice. As I looked out on the ice my heart started beating faster and faster as I tried my best to move my foot onto the ice. My leg felt paralyzed even though there was no real danger except falling in. What was wrong with me? I was delaying it more and more and just looking at the ice made me even more nervous than I probably would have been if I had just gone right away like my brother. I took another deep breath and very slowly I inched my foot closer and closer to the ice, being very mindful of what I was doing. Slowly I had placed it down. I was on the ice!

-this short story is inspired by the snow day prompt at reedsy.com