Skinny Snowmen

The Winter held Spring hostage. What should have been a balmy morning was unmercifully icy.

“Below zero last night,” my dad said.

I assumed that meant it was really, really cold, and it certainly felt that way as I sluggishly got out of my cosy bed to get ready for school.

It crossed my mind to feign a sore throat. I’d had many of those recently, so it wouldn’t be too far-fetched an excuse. The doctor said I had tonsillitis. At seven years old, I wasn’t sure what that was, but my mother explained that my tonsils were causing my sore throats and had to be removed. The tonsillectomy was to take place the following day.

My mom saw straight through my intention to avoid the cold and wallow under the duvet and was not about to let me play truant, so we headed off to school.

Although it was ghastly to go to school on any frosty day, my friends and I soon warmed up. We gathered on the sports fields to sprint and play all we could before the ringing of the first school bell. There was much laughter as we pretended we were dragons with our cold, ‘smoky’ breath billowing from our mouths.

Of course, back in the classroom, it was chilly again, particularly in this class. With her charcoal hair and ashen complexion, all that was missing from Mrs De Vries’s head was a pointy black hat. She was not known for her toasty personality. She was known, however, for her thick grey rulers, with which she would spank the palms of your hands for any wrongdoing in her class. Tests were unnerving because she would spank you for every answer you got wrong. If nothing else, this was a masterful motivator to study hard.

The lesson was Mathematics and would be taught in Afrikaans, one of the official languages of South Africa. It developed out of the speech of 17th-century settlers from Holland and is much like Dutch.

Although English is my first language, this was a dual-medium school, which meant that the class, regardless of the subject, would be taught in the first language of the teacher. It would be challenging at times to fully understand the lesson in a second language, but it certainly made you fluently bilingual.

It was the last lesson of the day, and I sat gazing out the window, nervously pondering my trip to the hospital. Would it be scary? What if it was sore? What if I felt the injection? How many injections would there be?

Amidst the dread, Mrs De Vries hit my desk with one of her thick grey rulers and bellowed, “En waar is jy?” (Where are you?). This gave me more of a fright than my thoughts of the hospital. Panicked, I said, “In die hospitaal, Juffrou” (In the hospital, ma’am).

She glared at me and said, in English, to make sure I understood, “No, you are in the Maths class. It’s time that you pay attention before I ask you to put out your hand.”

With the threat of a spanking, I listened intently to the lesson.

One of my classmates must also have been looking out the window, and in the middle of a subtraction exercise, she let out a joyful cry.

“Look! It’s snowing!”

A stunned silence took hold of the class, and Mrs De Vries started to say, “Oh, don’t be silly, there’s no…” 

“Snow!” we all shouted.

That was the end of school as streams of children poured out of their classrooms to marvel at this white wonder falling from the skies. In the ecstatic chaos, parents filled their cars with excited children racing homeward to romp in the snow.

Mom finally picked me up, and on the slippery road home, the usual scenes we saw that morning now had a magical makeover, everything covered in pillowy softness. We saw children, pets, and adults, touching, feeling, tasting the snow, despite the cold. The wonderment of it all was tangible.

There was an excellent reason for all this amazement. Contrary to what one might think, it does snow in South Africa; it snows seldom and only in certain parts of the country, but it does snow. It does not, however, snow in Johannesburg. That is especially rare, and on this day, the 10th of September 1981, Johannesburg had the greatest snowfall on record to date, with snow measuring fifteen to twenty centimetres deep. For young and old alike, this may have been the first, and possibly the last, time they would ever experience snow.

My school uniform layers started peeling off at the door and lay strewn along the corridor in favour of layers of woolly wear, long socks, scarf, gloves, beanie, boots. Wrapped up like an Eskimo, I was released to the garden.

My boots sank softly into the Flokati carpet of snow. I stopped. Looked up. Mesmerised. I listened to the soft snow as it fell and tickled my face. It whispered quietly as flake upon fairy-like flake, it landed on the white carpet beneath. It felt warm and fuzzy, not cold like I expected. And then an icy cold hit me in the face. I was stunned.

I may have forgotten about the crafty snowball fights I had seen on television, but my mother had not. She pelted me with another snowball, and then the game was afoot. My snowballs were disappointing, not tightly packed enough, and they quickly disintegrated, dropping short of my intended target – my mom’s face. That did not stop me from gathering up armfuls of snow and throwing them all over her. We howled with laughter as we smothered each other in snow. She left me to cavort with the neighbours who showed me how to make proper snowballs.

I returned home quite damp to find a lovely surprise – my father home early from work. I had to show off my snowball making skills, and this time I did not miss my target.

My dad and I built a snowman in the front garden for all to see. Frosty, the unoriginally named snowman, had a carrot for his nose and carrot-tops for his hair and coal and twigs for his eyes and his smile. My own smile lasted long after it was time to go indoors until I closed my eyes to dream of a winter wonderland.  

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In the morning, I heard that school had been cancelled for the day.

“Luckily, you won’t miss out on any schoolwork while you’re at the hospital,” Dad said.

Not missing out on schoolwork? Did he not understand? What about missing out on playing in the snow like everyone else? That was not lucky!

I was not one for tantrums, but the disappointment brought me close to one.

“Aww, Mom,” I whined, “why must I go today? Dad, can’t I go tomorrow? Can’t the tonsils stay one more day?”

My mother was not one for tantrums either, and I was sternly bundled into the car.

My dismay grew as we drove along with the delight of the snow visible at every turn – kids having snowball fights, kids and adults, adults and adults, and their pets too! Some were diving into mountains of snow, and others sliding down them on plastic container lids and baking trays.

In every garden, there was a snowman, each one standing guard. The keepers of the fun that I could not be part of. Everything took on a brighter colour against the pure background of the snow, except for my colour, which was Gloomy Grey, with a swirl of Envy Green. I would miss all this. I would be in the hospital wishing good riddance to the tonsils that stole my day in the snow. I was promised an unlimited supply of ice cream and jelly after the operation, but that was no consolation at all. I was miserable.

My mom tried to comfort me. “There will still be snow when you get back.”

“Will there?” I whimpered.

She promised there would. With a tinge of relief, I was wheeled into the operating theatre.

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I was excited to go home to play in the snow once more and add to Frosty’s wardrobe with the bright gown the nurses gave me. This time I pretended to feel marvellous when in fact, my throat was awfully painful, but I had to keep up the ruse, or I’d be sent straight to bed.

My excitement soon dwindled as we drove along the now slushy streets. The snow was rapidly melting. The white carpet had turned into small white rugs on the green grassy floor. The snowmen had become skinny, their carrot noses fallen to the ground. Some snowmen were undressed, rivulets of melted snow running down their bare bodies – mirrored by the streams running down my cheeks.

Mom and I entered the house in silence.

“You promised,” I wept.

She, too, looked sad.

“Why don’t we have some ice cream,” she said. “That’ll make us feel better.”

I moped off to the kitchen and opened the freezer. I stood. Frozen.

Mom peered around the door with the eyes of an excited child. In utter disbelief, I looked back into the freezer.

Before me was an abundance of freezer bags filled with … snowballs.

My mom knelt beside me, winked, and said, “I promised there would still be snow when you got back.”