The Toboggan

Kevin did not want his father to see him cry. This wasn’t because Kevin’s father was a mean man. It was because Kevin knew that his father cared too much. If he saw him crying, then he would cry. And it would ruin the whole day. After what had happened, there had been more ruined days than he could remember. So he hid in the bathroom.

…

It was all because of the snow boots. Her snow boots. The morning had started normally enough. His dad woke him up for breakfast and they started talking about what they wanted to do during the day. Those days, it was a pretty useless conversation that usually ended in his dad fiddling with things around the house that didn’t need fixing and Kevin watching movies or reading. Plus, it was a Saturday in the middle of January, so there wasn’t much going on. Except for the snow. Overnight, close to a foot had fallen and blanketed the world in the soft, white carpet of winter. His dad sat down beside him at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee as Kevin poked his Fruit Loops around the bowl. He stared out the window and said something that made Kevin drop his spoon:

“We should go tobogganing today. Whaddya think?”

He asked the question in such a neutral voice that Kevin wasn’t sure it was his dad talking at all. Maybe he had been abducted by aliens or something. As random as it was, Kevin liked the idea.

“Sure, dad. That sounds great,” he said.

“Okay, kiddo. Finish up your breakfast and get your gear on. I’ll take Sandy out for a quick trot and we’ll ship out.”

The Sandy in question was a Golden Retriever that was laying under the kitchen table, eyes open, hopeful for any falling food. Kevin threw Sandy a Fruitloop, finished the rest of his cereal, brought the bowl to sink, rinsed it, and set it to dry. Then he went to the front closet to dig out his snow boots. He had to climb in on his hands and knees, as the snow boots were buried near the back. They had had a mild winter so far, and he had been cycling through various running shoes up until the big snow last night. He heard the tap on in the kitchen as his dad rinsed his mug followed by the scraping of paws and nails on the hardwood floor as his dad grabbed the leash from on top of Sandy’s cage. His dad’s boots were already out of the closet, moderately soggy from shoveling snow early in the morning, so he was saved a trip into the closet of mixed up footwear.

“Be back soon. It’s too cold for a long one, so I’m just gonna take her for a short one. I’ll get the ‘bogan out from the garage when we get back,” he said.

“Okay, dad!” Kevin said, his voice muffled from the closet. He continued digging and after finding both of his boots he tossed them into the hall. He was inching his way out when his eyes caught a flash of grey at the back of the closet. He reached for the boot and felt his heart sink. A normal black snow boot with a gray faux-fur lining on the inside… his mom’s boot. He picked it up and held it. How long, he wondered, had it been since she had worn these? It must have been four years. He tried to do the math in his head. She got sick three years ago… was still kinda healthy then… got really bad two years ago…. There. Two years. Something that nobody else had touched since she had been alive. He searched for a few more seconds and found the other one. He made his way out of the closet and sat in the middle of his quiet and empty house. There was no word for the feeling that came to him, gripping him in the pit of his stomach. Nameless as it was, it was no stranger to Kevin. He knew its icy embrace all too well. He felt the wringing and twisting inside of his stomach move upwards and lodge itself in his throat. And that’s when the tears came. Holding one of the last things his mother, and no one else, had touched, he cried. And that was when he started to worry about his dad coming back. He headed to the bathroom, where he could muffle his sobs with a hand towel, and tried to maintain the silence that he and his father had become so accustomed to.

…

 Even before his mom had died, there had been silence in their house; back then, it was an invasive kind of silence, one that muffles thoughts and rounds the edges of time itself, one moment leading into another, until something like a phone call would shatter it. The conversation was always the same, his father, eyes closed in something deeper than exasperation, nodding his head with the routine.

“Yea, she’s doing okay. Having a good day…. Chemo’s fine…. Well, you never know with these things….Yup. Gotta just hope for the best.”

Kevin would listen to these conversations from the couch with the TV on mute, or from the kitchen table with his math textbook open to a page of problems that paled in comparison to the one in his own life. His dad would usually go upstairs and talk to his mom after these calls, and he would be left alone with his thoughts. He didn’t even think of cancer as something scientific that could be viewed under a microscope. He thought of it as darkness. Inside of her body, the darkness was growing. First, it made her tired. Then, it made her skinny. Then, it took her hair. The worst part was how sick it made her. How weak. How many times he would sit beside her, holding her hands that had grown bony and frail, and worry that squeezing her fingers might break them. And then one day, it was all over. The darkness, insatiable as it was, had enveloped her into the greatest darkness of them all.

…

There is no way to describe the pain that Kevin and his father would feel in the next six months. Grief is the longest five letter word in the English language. Slowly, but surely, they figured things out. They spent days inside ordering pizzas and watching but not really watching movies. They adopted Sandy, which made a huge difference. All of the counselors had told them that physical activity was of the utmost importance; and what was better for physical activity than a dog?

…

And so, maybe now you can understand why Kevin was so worried about upsetting his dad again, now that things had finally started to even out a bit. He looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were red, his nose running. He cleaned himself up and took a deep breath. More than anything, he needed to do this for his dad. There was no instruction manual for this stuff, but you didn’t need to be Oprah to realize how much his dad was going through that he didn’t say to Kevin. A realization struck him: he’d left the boots in the hallway. His dad would see them.

Kevin throw the tissues away and ran down the hall, grabbed the boots, and tossed them into the back of the closet, throwing a few random shoes over them for disguise. Just in time. As he closed the closet, the front door opened and Sandy came bounding in, her paws covered in fresh, cold snow. His dad’s voice from the front porch:

“Clean her up, will ya? I’ll get the ‘bogan.”

Kevin grabbed a towel and began to dry Sandy’s paws, an activity that Sandy didn’t care for in the slightest. He soothed her as he ran the towel in between her paws, getting the chunks of hidden ice and snow. When he was finished, he gave her an extra long hug and could have sworn that she would have hugged him back if she could’ve. Maybe she even knew that he was upset? He had been convinced for a while that dogs could sense human emotion, so it didn’t really surprise him. He grabbed a treat for her, tossed it on the floor, and went out to the garage.

The toboggan was out. It was one of those old sleds, the straight piece of painted wood with a curve at the end that was perfect for families. Well. Perfect for most families. For the last few years, this particular toboggan had been sitting beneath a pile of cardboard boxes and unused gardening equipment. His dad smiled at him proudly.

“She’s a beaut, ain’t she?”

“Sure is, dad.”

“Hey, let’s get a move on. The longer we wait, the more kids’ll be up at the hill. Grab the end.”

With that, his dad picked up the curved end and Kevin the long end. And they walked.

It was a short walk to the park around the corner. They walked in silence. Silence can be normal among family members; this becomes even more true when families go through a shared trauma. There are those moments when words become inadequate to express thoughts, and when thoughts become inadequate to express whatever lies deeper than thought.

Kevin’s dad took a deep breath in.

“God, I love the smell of winter. It’s just so… fresh. Y’know?”

Kevin knew where he was coming from. He even knew about a word called petrichor that his last English teacher had told him about, but that was about the smell of fresh rain. He was sure there would be a word like that for snow.

“Yea,” he said. “I know what you mean. The world just seems so brand new. Like, everything is about to be re-born.”

There was no reply from his dad, but Kevin knew this was a good thing. It meant that he was thinking about what he had said. And so the silence continued.

…

The hill was actually a giant reservoir that supplied the city with water. While there were signs posted that forbade sledding, people did anyway. They trudged up the hill, carrying the three-person toboggan, Kevin feeling his legs ache with the incline. He was sweating, and that peculiar sensation of freezing while boiling was taking place on his face where there were droplets of sweat that were turning to icicles. By the time they got to the top, they both had to stop and take a breath.

While not as spectacular as looking at the city from the edge of the mountain, the view from the top of the hill was breathtaking in its own way. It wasn’t as if there was something special to see… it was just rows of houses. But there was something special in seeing so many of them at once. A bird’s-eye view of suburbia, one might say. Kevin’s dad, ever the master of efficiency, told him to get ready. There would be more kids coming soon. So they walked the sled over to the edge of the hill and put it down. His dad sat at the back, to anchor it, and Kevin sat at the front. He couldn’t help notice the empty seat in front of him. The seat that, if the world were good and good people didn’t die because of evil diseases, would be filled by himself. And his mom would be in his seat. And there would be that collective thrill, the excitement that is shared between people who are about to do something slightly foolish but safe enough. For a second, he wanted his dad to say something about that empty spot. To acknowledge that empty space in their lives, and to say that however much it hurt, however difficult it would be, they would move past it. But he didn’t. And somehow, with a part of him that was perhaps deeper and more advanced than he could comprehend, Kevin understood that.

Instead, his dad said: “You ready, kiddo?”

Kevin looked back at his dad and said, “Yea!” There was nothing fake in his excitement; it was as real as the snow beneath them. His dad put his boots on the snow beside them, and like a bobsled racer, began to rock them back and forward, picking up momentum. After three pushes, they were off, bounding and bumping and sliding down the hill, cutting a smooth path through the snow. The wind was whipping around their faces, and at one point, they hit a substantial bump that they would both feel the next day on their tailbones. Eventually, they skidded to a halt near the bottom of the hill.

Kevin popped up from the sled and smiled, his cheeks kissed by roses of frost.

“Again?”

His dad stayed in the sled for a few seconds, looking at nothing in particular. There were small flakes of snow or ice near the edges of his eyes, and Kevin wondered if he had been crying. His dad stood up and stretched.

“Boy, oh boy! That ride was a bit bumpy. Say, let’s take it a few yards to the left next time, eh? Maybe we’ll end up with some flat hill.”

Kevin nodded in agreement and the two began their trudge back up the mountain. This continued for another 45 minutes, the sliding and gliding and bumping, followed by the trudging. There was one more thing Kevin didn’t want his dad to know. He kept on thinking that he might see her. That in this moment of joy, she might come back. Even just to say hi. Not to stay or anything, and not like a ghost. Just a second, a flash of recognition to say that she was there. With them. But as hard as he tried to see her, there was nothing. Each time they trudged back up the hill, he kept his eyes peeled to the top of the mountain. For some reason, he figured she would choose there for her return. Angels come on high, right? Isn’t that how the song goes? But after nearly an hour of intense tobogganing, Kevin was left with nothing but tired legs and drift snow in his eyes.

They stood at the top of the hill panting, their breath making plumes of steam. There is an unspoken code amongst tobogganers that when everyone is tired and feeling like they are done for the day, then you have the last time down the hill. And it is always the best one. Everyone lets out all of the adrenaline they have. They push a little harder and slide a little faster. This was the look that Kevin’s dad gave him as he climbed into the sled for the last time that afternoon. He reached forward and clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture that meant more than any word could. Kevin smiled back and braced himself for their takeoff. As expected, he put every bit of energy left in his legs into their launch, and it showed. They flew down that hill, almost getting air time as they hit a bump. Kevin felt the air whip past his face again and wished that he could bottle the moment, and sip on it for the rest of his life. This moment, he and his dad, speeding down a hill, was easily the freest he had felt in years. And it was then that he felt something. The wind seemed to speed up, and he could have sworn that he heard whispering, far more human than air. He scanned the bottom of the hill for a figure and saw nothing. But there was no denying it; he hadn’t just heard something…he had felt something. It was deep inside of him, where just an hour before that icy grasp of sadness and memory had nearly choked him. Now, it was a warm sensation, even with his extremities nearly falling off in the brutal cold. He felt full of light. And warmth. And love.

…

At the bottom of the hill, Kevin and his dad were catching their breath and reveling in how amazing that last run was. They picked up their toboggan and started to walk home. Kevin thought about asking his dad if he had noticed anything on that last run, but decided against it. Why ruin a perfectly good afternoon?

…

Back in their kitchen, with Sandy in her favorite position under the table, Kevin’s dad put a mug of steaming hot chocolate in front of him. The tray of shortbread, remnants of a Christmas gift from Kevin’s aunt Karen, came next. They sat together and waited for the hot chocolate to cool, both of them surreptitiously feeding Sandy crumbs of biscuit. Something about the moment, the calm silence in the aftermath of their exciting afternoon, told Kevin he should ask his dad about their last run.

“Hey, dad. You know on our last run there? Did you-”

Although it was very unlike him, Kevin’s dad interrupted him.

“I felt her too, son. She was there with us.”

They both looked at each other for a long time. The tears came, and neither cared. They hugged. Sandy joined in, placing her snout on Kevin’s leg. And for the first time in a long time, the silence that followed felt less like sadness. It wasn’t quite happiness; they weren’t even sure if they knew what that was anymore. But it was a silence of strength. Of forgiveness. And of cautious hope for the future.