THE TWINS FIRST REAL SNOW DAY AS INDIVIDUALS WHO COULD BE OUT IN IT, RUN AROUND IN IT, THROW IT, EAT IT...

[Kaya and the twins left yesterday with their parents, heading back up north into the snowstorm, so now I have time to input and post this earlier entry from the handwrit KidVisitJournal... RB]

Having known the twins for the three years of their entire lives, I knew that this was their fourth winter, but I'd sort of forgotten that for their first winter they couldn't even sit up or use their hands yet, had no teeth and were asleep most of the time - cradle please - then for their second winter, at just over a year old they were crawly and pretty useless in this soft, cold stuff whatever it is - breast please - then when they were two, the white outdoors was strange, looming and uncertain for short, new legs - indoors please - so this time I was caught off guard when into the feathery snowstorm they flew like snowballs, and what's more right away took off their coats, scarves, gloves and other barriers so that the fluffy white stuff could fall from the sky all the more directly onto their persons.

Arms wide, they galloped into the falling whiteness with mouths open, bent and gathered the fallen white fluff up in bunches and ate it, then formed it into crude but cute little snowballs that they launched with brand-new arms it didn't matter where, the snow could do such interesting things it made them kiddygiddy.

For me it pointed out once more that there's nothing like little-kid laughs in the generous calm of a feathery snowstorm, where somehow the snowstars and the giggleclouds combine in a deep-reaching synergy of happy and flaky, so the twins didn't care that they were getting soaked with snow melting on the heat of their bodies, snowcovered wet hair down in their faces, though now and then in all the rush of snowy newness they were stopped in their bootprints by what is known ophthalmologically as the "Big Fat Snowflake in the Eye Syndrome," when they'd stand there blinking hard in puzzlement at the strangeness of one eye not hurting but suddenly being coldly fuzzy and unlookable through.

I chased them around and caught them sometimes, put on their coats, scarves and gloves, then they'd run somewhere else and take them off, it was a game we played for quite a while among the other big-snow games we made up amid the falling white stars. Elder sister Kaya, though setting a good example by joining in wearing her nice hooded jacket, scarf and gloves, was circumspectly every bit as giddy as her sisters.

In time the cold won out, though, even over that much energy. Fortunately, in the woodstove we had a fire almost as warm as the huge one the highfired trio had just burned up.