SNOW IS A FOUR LETTER WORD

At New Years I'd made myself a fabulous resolution and I'd made it to be accomplished on April first, my definition of the first day of spring. I'd really proved how clever I was with the brilliant revelation that no one ever keeps resolutions in January and February when everyone and their donkey is down with the winter ultramarines. As my friends all fell off their high tower resolutions, broken diets, broken gym appointments, et cetera, I smugly explained my own genius plan and left them gawking.

Well, today was the day. The skylarks and meadowlarks sang outside my window and woke me up to the sun tickling my freckles. I picked the blanket lint out of my toes and enjoyed the bright yellow nail polish on my fingernails, which I had chosen in honour of Spring.

Whistling "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," as my grandma often did, I burrowed my way through to the back of the closet where my summer clothes had been banished to since fall. I couldn't see a pickled thing. I was back in seconds with a flashlight and vague thoughts of "tidying up" floating through my brain.

My favourite denim shorts with the green pockets were elusive and I made like a badger to unearth them from a pile at my feet. My best tank top was in plain sight but had a mustard stain on it. So what, the stain matched the abstract flowers on the teal background.

The birds were still duelling their songs, the sun still reached long rays into the room and stroked my hair. Now for my bikini, the one with spotted ducks all over it, smelling like last fall's barbeque, then my tank and shorts went over that. Likely the neighbours, Miss Henson and her sister would be watching me and they didn't need to see my rolls.

Breakfast and coffee could wait. The great sunshiny outdoors was getting impatient with me. After all the birds and the sun didn't need to get dressed first. I allowed an image of myself in my skin-suit parading in front of Miss Henson's bay window to elicit several chuckles from the depths of my bowels. Or was that gurgle something else?

Grabbing a faded beach towel from the closet I threw open the garden doors that led to the deck and tripped over the threshold in shock, landing face-first in the most enormous snowdrift of the year. The entire yard was billowing white. WHAT THE FROOT LOOPS? The sun that had caressed me up in my room now mocked me with it's April Fool joke. So this was Manitoba? I was not amused.

 I stood and wrapped myself in the thin towel and stared. Had a fleet of semi-trucks come in the night and attempted to bury the entire house? The glare on all that snow was blinding. How could I now carry out my mission?

 As I turned to go back inside and have a triple espresso with my favourite "flavour" dumped in, I caught sight of the neighbour sisters watching me through their window. I feebly answered the waving of their prune-skin hands then paused with one freezing foot in the house and the other out. If I backed out now, the Henson sisters would spread the fact faster than a viral video on Youtube. Everyone knew my resolution. Why, oh why did I brag-mouth it all over town?

I had a tryst, a resolution to fulfill. The winter shovel was still on the deck and I braced my back into shovelling a path through to the pool at the far end.

If anyone ever needs this information, sweat and goosebumps don't mix. The sweat froze then crackled on my goosebumps as they grew into hills. Tank shirt and shorts froze as my perspiration soaked in. My legs turned purple, my arms were red. And my nose burst with snot at each thrust of the shovel.

Pride, shmide. Maybe I should stop. Maybe I should just stand on the ice in the pool. Maybe, if I could just get the Henson sisters to leave their window for a second.

But every time I looked, there they were, smiling toothlessly and waving me on. Grandad always called me obstinate. Actually the words he used were pig-headed or mule-headed. I preferred tenacious.

I reached the pool, brushed the snow off the ladder and climbed, slipping twice, and landing butt first on the pile I had just made. Great snow for snow angels, just not in APRIL. Now at the top, I groaned. There must be a meter of snow on top of the ice. My teeth clattered like a broken chainsaw. My dreads had formed icicles. Pneumonia was not part of my resolution but seemed inevitable. There came a rap at the sisters' window. Company had joined them at the window in the form of the bookseller and his wife. All nodding and shooing me on.

If I die of exposure I hope they live out their remaining days guilt-ridden. I retrieved the shovel and went at it again, knowing exercise was the only thing keeping me from hypothermia. I cleared a couple of meters of snow off the ice and still hanging on to the ladder rail, sat gingerly down on it. It looked thick, and maybe I hadn't perfectly completed my resolution of swimming on the first day of spring I had done enough. I'd never gotten frostbite before, not even in forty below weather, but I bet I will now. Still, no eating humble pie for me. I grinned like a Cheshire cat, waved to my spectators and heard them rap on the window again. They didn't stop. It was a "standing" ovation. On and on the noise went, louder and louder, and then--

Splash! Soak-city. Ice like broken crystals in my hair and everywhere, sparkling in the sun.

So I did fulfill my resolution. I went for my swim. I felt like an overgrown popsicle, right down to the pink and purple colour. I found my footing in the pool, pushed the thin layer of ice out of the way and stood up, one gigantic shiver. So much for humble pie. It was humiliating, demeaning, and disgraceful pie. Now for sure I'd catch pneumonia. I scrambled up the ladder, shook myself like a wet sheepdog and headed for the house, then around the corner came not just the Henson sisters, but their company as well, bearing gifts of enormous comforters. They wrapped me up like the Michelin man, took me into their home, placed me before the fire, and plied me with hot tea and a hot water bottle.

Miss Henson, her sister, and the bookseller and his wife all fussed over me, congratulated me, and didn't complain when I sneezed violently over their blankets. Nobody, nobody except this little voice in my idiotic brain, told me how stupid I was.

Truth is, they knew there was no point. And so did I. They knew me. Knew me well. They were just waiting for the next stunt I would pull to entertain them on their lonely days.