Memories of an Earlier November

While we hold the terrors going on in another land in one part of our mind, and pray for others, we also are moving into a new season here in Canada. We pull out our warm clothes and get ready for snow. Today, I pulled out a memory to share from an earlier November.

I was clearing snow off our car when our grandson arrived with his mom. His eyes, bright with excitement seeing all that bright white clean snow, he watched more come down. He slipped on the driveway and fell down a couple of times as he made his way up. He cried a little because it hurt, but with a hug from his mom the tears were soon gone.

When one is two and a half, one usually does not remember the winter before. He’d helped his dad rake leaves days before, and now there was this white stuff. Heaps of it. He scurried off to the side of the house and chose a shovel. The shovel was meant for an adult, but that didn’t matter.

Bundled up in warm winter coat, hat, boots, Nolan started pushing snow around. He eagerly pushed and pulled shovelfuls of snow from one side of the driveway to the other, around the car. It was play and he was loving it.

While I cleared snow off the car, he said, “Gamma, shovel.” Meaning, you to do it too. Together we made trails around the driveway. At one point, he declared he was ready to go in. “Snack,” he said. All the energy he’d used meant he needed a refuel.

Later, we trekked down the street to mail a card. I lifted him so he could deposit the envelope in the big red box. On the way back, he found a stick that he trailed along in the snow. There were rabbit tracks and maybe tracks of a dog being walked.

We never did get the whole driveway cleared that morning. If our neighbour had looked out his front window, he would have seen a toddler making a single path past his house and enjoying the task.

Now Nolan is 6. This year, making a snow man might come first, then the shovel. He still enjoys the outdoors in any season.

We may be weighed down by many cares, but, oh, how fun to see a new experience through a toddler’s eyes. May we also approach our days with such enthusiasm.