Frozen Memories

Warning: Sensitive content regarding gruesome death

“Maya, wake up,”  Maya’s Sarah, Sarah, stood over her bed.  A cup of coffee in her hands but still dressed in her red plaid sleepwear set with slippers on her feet.  

“I’m still sleeping,” Maya said, yawning and tossing over. 

“I know, but I want to show you something.” 

Maya forced her eyes open, wiping at them with the back of both hands.  

“What do you want to show me?” 

“Look,” Sarah said, pointing out the window.

She climbed out of bed, Sarah reached out to stabilize her with a single hand while she balanced her coffee with the other.  Maya looked out the window at what her mother was gesturing to, here eyes got large and her mouth dropped open.  Outside her bedroom window, where it was usually gray and brown was sheets of white. 

“Mommy, did it snow last night?” 

Sarah smiled, “do you think it snowed last night?”

Maya nodded her head excessively.  “I have never seen snow before.  Can I play in it?” 

“Of course.  But you will need to wear that new jacket Grandpa Hilyard gave you and gloves.” 

Once Maya dressed herself with her mother’s help, she ran out the front door, slowing down her pace after gliding across the wood.  It was slippery and felt hard below her feet.

“Be careful.  It is icy,” Sarah said from behind her.  “When I was a little girl about your age, I slipped and broke my wrist.  You don’t want that to happen to you do you?” 

“You had snow growing up?”  Maya asked, climbing down the stairs one at a time and grasping onto the rail with both hands.

“Of course we had snow.  It was so much and so frequent that although the first snowfall was exciting, it got tiresome quickly.  Here in California, we get a little snow.  In fact, last time I remember it snowed here…”  Maya’s Sarah trailed off.  She didn’t want to be reminded of the last time she saw snow here.  

She left Oregon to get away from what happened up there and the snow fall only reminded her of what she left.  She started a new life and nearly forgot about the event.  But when it finally snowed in California, it reminded Sarah of why she left Oregon and why she vowed to never go back.  

Sarah never told Maya what had happened.  In her six years of age, she didn’t think that Maya would understand, but perhaps, she should start the story sooner than later, providing snippets of details year over year.  There was no worry in that situation happening here, but the world was a cruel and scary place, and Sarah knew it.  

At that Maya pelted Sarah with a soft ball of snow.

“What was that?” She asked with mock surprise.

“A snowball fight?” Maya asked more of a question than a statement to answer Sarah's question.

“Let me show you how to make a real snowball,” said sarah, gathering white snow in her gloves.  

Maya’s Sarah approached Maya, “you pick up as much snow as you can, like this.  Then you pack it as tight as you can.  Then you throw it at your target.” Maya’s Sarah launched her snowball at a nearby tree.  Maya followed Sarah's actions.

As the sun grew higher in the sky, the snow started to melt and become hard as glass.

“The snow is not as fun anymore when it goes away,” Maya said with a pout.

“It really is not, is it?  Why don’t we go inside and have some hot cocoa.  I want to tell you about something that happened to me when I was a girl in the snow.” 

Maya led the way to the front door and as she crossed the porch she forgot about it being slippery and danced across it as though it were a stage.

Sarah passed Maya the steaming cup of hot cocoa.

“Are you going to tell me about when you were a little girl in the snow?” Maya asked.  Her eyes were big and bright and Sarah worried that telling her daughter about the world would dampen them.

“Yes,” Sarah paused.  “But I don’t want you to be frightened.  Nothing like this could ever happen here.  We don’t get enough snow.” 

Maya puckered her lips and looked at her mother sideways.

“When I was a little older than you,” Sarah started. “My mother worked at a snow lodge on the mountain.  It was quite small and quaint and I loved visiting her while she worked.  She would sit at the front desk and I would sit by the fire and read a book or, on a nice day, I would go out and play in the snow.” 

“Did you build a snowman?” Asked Maya.

“I built hundreds of snowmen,” Sarah smiled.  “Then one day, when I was at home with Grandpa Hilyard.  There was an avalanche… Do you know what an avalanche is?”   

“Is that when the enormous mountain gets really grumpy? And all the snow on the mountain decides it wants to make all the heavy snow go away so it shakes it off?”

Sarah raised her eyebrows pursing her mouth together.  “Yes… More or less.”  She brings her face back to neutral and then her eyes droop slightly.  “Anyway, the lodge that your grandmother worked for, my mother.  It was on a mountain, high up, but not quite to the peak.  That was the appeal.  You could see the entire valley below and still hike up.  One day it became sunnier than they had expected and the snow melted in such a way to cause an avalanche on the mountain.  And the lodge was at the bottom.”

Sarah paused, looking at her daughter.  She didn’t want to add that they did not find many people until spring time, still frozen like ice cubes left on the counter to melt.  And, because of Sarah’s father’s grief, they asked Sarah to identify her mother’s body.  She didn’t tell her daughter that the corpse had a look of desperation on her face and that she had her arms up as if she was trying to climb out of the snow with legs kicking.  

No, her daughter was too young for the details, but Maya deserved to know why she didn’t have a grandmother, Sarah escaped the snow and never planned to look back.