Jamie's New Red Sled

After a while, the damned pandemic just seemed to go on and on. It was the 20th of Jan 2021 and the grueling farm chores seemed endless. Feeding the horses and chickens, cleaning everything up was unceasing, like laundry or dishes.

After a couple of whopping prairie schooners, the snow was deep and crisp underfoot. Only on the coldest days does the snow squeak and squawk as your boots push through the crust while the sundogs dance in celestial stars of frosty, dusty illumination. Blinded by the brilliant, glacial sun circles. Their light is not warm. It is frigid light.

Janis bundled herself up in her warmest coat and wrapped up her head in a scarf before putting up the hood that enveloped her weathered face. Only her piercing blue eyes and button nose were not hidden in the fur.

Janis then pushed her feet into her boots and braved opening the door. The difficulty was stopping the door from blowing out of an unsuspecting hand and banging onto the side of the house. She managed not to go pummelling out the door with it. Closing the heavy door quickly behind her before a gust gave it a wing. Crystal, glittering, blowing, shimmering dust was swirling designs of grass and snow snakes on the driveway. Janis was never surprised by how many animal shapes she could see in the snow. Or in the clouds. Big prairies have big skies beside them.

Feeding the horses and letting them out to pasture was a chilling chore. She padded as quickly as her 76-year-old legs would carry her out to the ancient barn where the nag horses, long to pasture, waited for her. They didn't seem to care about the chill day and bobbed their heads in anticipation while she struggled with the loop of rope tied on the door holding them inside the barn.

Lolly and Dilly danced out of the barn just like they always did. Manes flying, hooves clattering over the barn floor. Pastured horses have a kind of childish playfulness only known to unbroke colts and retired horses. The wind and snow didn't seem to bother them much and they whinnied and danced along the fence line and over the hill where she could no longer see the pair.

Out of the corner of her eye, Janis spied the red shiny sled they had bought their grandson Jamie for Christmas standing where they had left it for him, in the corner of the barn. He hadn't been allowed to come to the farm because of the social restrictions and had only seen the sled in the pictures they shared on their weekly video visits on Fridays after school. Janis and Teddy both looked forward to these calls where their grandkids Della, Joe, and Jamie would share their week with them. Usually, they would see them in town and they would come out for the weekends to ride the old nags and enjoy the farm as they always had. Jamie didn't seem too enthusiastic about the shiny old fashioned type sled on speedy steel runners, they had found at the P mart when it had started to snow. All the sleds were lined up in the store like shiny candy. Super speeders and hill demons, but this one was called the Crimson Flyer. It was stenciled over the middle board in big white letters in contrast to confectionary glossy red paint.

Janis looked straight at it, remembering a time when her father had pulled them behind Nancy in a sled, not unlike this red one Nancy was born on this farm and lived in the pastures here until she was old enough to start to work the cattle. Janis had learned to ride on Nancy and do tricks with her at the Rodeo and braided her coarse chestnut mane for the little parades small towns would have back then to celebrate each other.

Then she had a really great idea.. she wondered how Teddy would feel about it. He had been here for the horse-drawn sleds in childhood. She wondered where that old wooden sled was.

While rushing to feed the chickens and searching for a rare winter egg, which she didn't find among the roosts, she thought of those old rides with her father. Just over there on the hill, they had ridden, taking turns with her siblings. She wondered if Teddy would go for it as she toodled back to the house, after smashing the hard layer of ice on the horse's water, with the hammer hanging from the fence for this purpose only. She hardly felt the cold at all now.

It really wasn't much to convince Teddy. Teddy was young at heart. Around him, always, were all the children, who loved his stories and all the good things he had to teach them. Especially the boys. After she unpacked herself from her winter gear she sat down at the table with Teddy and talked about the paper and drank two pots of coffee with him as they chatted about the news and sat together as they did each and every day.

Then she asked him, in a sweet young voice of his remembering, "Wanna go sledding? I think that Tilly can still pull it. We don't weigh much." Janis wiggled in her chair, feeling foolish. "How silly, what an old fool I truly am," she told herself as she looked for his response.

She could see the doubts flash behind his big brown eyes. Those beautiful, deep, considering, eyes she had fallen in love with all those decades ago. He thought quietly for several seconds not believing the old woman has asked him to go sledding behind that old nag Dilly. He picked up his dribbled down old mug and looked in the mirky liquid for some kind of oracle answer.

"Sure," he answered. Clear and sure, not the least bit what Janis had expected him to say.

Teddy loved to play with the horses. He had them pulling carts and doing easy tricks. He had taught all the kids to ride over the years. As he sat and finished his last dregs of coffee he remembered his childhood. His grandfather had an old sleigh they used to hitch up and take all the kids riding in. If you lived on the farm, you got the prairie miracle of hitching up and riding in the sleigh under the tatty Hudson's bay blanket all the way to school in town. Bone-chilling sleigh rides to school were the highlight of the long winters.

It was only a couple of miles so it really wasn't a long ride over the hill and near the road. The silent silver snow and air swishing under the rails was the only sound other than the jingle of the bells and the old man's youthful laughter as he urged the horses to go ever faster. But they were only ponies and we weren't really flying. But it felt like it. It was a queer remembering, His grandfather had died when he was only five. After that, no one ever tackled up the great jangling sleigh for school anymore. The school bus came to the yard.

Both were bursting with memories and excitement as they whistled for the horses, who promptly came looking for oat and wheat cookies they get when they come back to the barn. Teddy harnessed up the old horse and got an old rope to pull the new red sled. They were going to video it on the phone for the kids to see. Maybe the sled would be more enticing after this. They were bundled up like Russians on the coldest day of the year in hand-knitted mitts and scarves, floppy woolen hats, and old work snow pants.

Thankfully Dilly wasn't so big and it wasn't too much of a job to get in the saddle. Dilly neighed and puffed as Teddy got comfortable aloft her swayback. Dilly had all the children ride on her. Her beautiful buckskin coat was a full-on winter fluff and her main, all frosty, shimmered as she moved her head. Janis got comfy on the red-painted sled. She sat with her feet between the blades and her hands on the ropes. The anticipation grew in her chest and her tummy felt like dancing butterflies, no different than when she rode the little wooden sled that was buried under years of living, in the basement, that she rode on when she was five.. She was a child again as the wind stung her face, her fingertips burned as she waited for her ride.

"Ready?" Teddy shouted back to her.

"Ready," she called back.

With a twist of Teddy's old boot heal, both he and Dilly remembered instinctively what to do and they were off. Dilly's hooves clomped and crunched into the snow beneath. She was big enough that it was not much to pull the child's sled with the tiny elderly dreamers. The blowing snow was the witness to their glee.

All afternoon the two played together in the snow. Like the children, they were when they married in their teens. All the labor and difficulties of farm life disappeared and the magic of all those years ago filled the day and enveloped the two all afternoon. Together they put away the sled after taking a few turns of horse and sled riding and forgot how old they were while they drank hot chocolate with marshmallows and laughed at the exploit of the day. The videos went viral on social media that month.

Jamie did love the sled, and all the grandkids came out and started a new tradition of nags and sleds. Even in the darkest winter of everyone's lives, they found joy. All the past melted away in that afternoon of love and memory as the icicles on their eyelashes melted away.