Snow Angel

A favorite spot along one of our creek ways, there is always water in this stone pool

My friends I have abandoned you once again!  But here I am with a thought or two to share.  I did start writing group again last week and it was wonderful to put pen to paper again.  So funny, that morning I woke and thought to myself  "today I will become a writer again" and then immediately laughed following that thought with this one "I'm always a writer, I just don't write!"  But that is an old, old situation for every person involved in any artistic endeavor, the struggle to produce, focus, create.  PUT IT OUT THERE.

So I thought I would share something that I wrote in class last week.  An except generated by the prompt:

"Snow Angel"

For many seasons our father bought us a new toboggan at Christmas, we always destroyed it within a month or so taking too much "air", cramming too many bodies on board.  Eventually he stopped investing.  But one of those cold Connecticut Januaries I remember the boys took me sledding at night, to the golf course near our house, out with the big kids, all of us piled on board and when we crashed at the bottom I got pitched into a deep drift.  There, under the soft white womb, I could hear muffled voices, laughing, other kids screaming as they flew down the steep hill.  I could see a glimpse of night sky through the opening created by my little body when it flew off the sled into the snow.  I felt a strange calmness there, insulated and warm, calling out in a tiny voice "help, help me, I'm in here".  Soon the boys found me, pulling me up and out, joking, jostling, dragging me back up the hill for another ride, more running, jumping aboard, flying down, tumbling off at the bottom of the slope.  All of us on the toboggan, me squeezed between the boys, shrieking as we flew down the hill, again and again, safe in the sandwich of bodies that was me and my brothers, my protectors, my knights in padded armor. 

This weekend I'm heading to the coast for a brief retreat and focus on work towards my certificate in Environmental Education.  I'll be taking the computer and hope to post from there.  Thanks all you faithful readers for continuing to come back for more.