Dress Like You Might Have to Walk

I know I wear a lot of impractical things, but never doubt that beneath all the sequins and puffs, there is a level headed farm girl to the core.  No matter where I am going or what time of year it is, I always bring along the kind of clothes I would need should I have to walk home.  Maybe that sounds silly, but it's a lesson I learned the hardest way possible when I was a very little girl on a day much like this.  The snow doesn't usually start in this part of the world until February.  It's been that way as long as I could remember and it made for quite a few boring Spring Breaks spent indoors watching it sleet and snow.  It was sometime close to Valentine's Day and my best friend, Simona asked if we could have a sleepover.  Simona was the anti-Leandra which is why I liked her so much.  She was the sun to my moon, the warrior to my poet.  We became friends because our brothers played sports together and there was no one else our age sitting through all those games.  Eventually we decided to become cheerleaders for their team, even getting uniforms and practicing our cheers.  Our moms also worked together and were old high school friends so our friendship came about very organically.  I was never much for sleepovers, I didn't like outsiders invading my home and weekends and staying at other people's houses gave me a stomach ache, but with Simona it felt like family so I never passed on the opportunity to spend outside-of-school time with her.

Since it was so close to Valentine's day and also because it was so cold outside, we talked of nothing but which boys we liked, making cards, and having hot cocoa with conversation hearts instead of marshmallows.  Boys discussed, cards made, and cocoa drank, we curled up in our sleeping bags on the floor by the fire and talked long into the night until we fell asleep.  The next morning we woke up to windows coated with frost and mom cooking bacon and eggs in the kitchen.  It had sleeted and snowed in the night and the roads were too slick for us to take Simona home.  She would have to stay with us until the afternoon when the roads thawed.  Squealing our delight between mouthfuls of bacon, we wrapped up in blankets and went to my room to begin an epic day of play.  We had to wrap up in blankets because during the winter only the central part of the house was heated by a fire.  The bedrooms were closed off to keep the house warmer which made indoor play remarkably similar to outdoor play in the winter in that they both involved putting on hats and coats and having to come out of the cold to get warm now and then.

 

And so we played for hours and hours, Simona always coming up with storylines for our dolls that I would never have thought of.  At two o'clock we emerged from my arctic room to warm up and maybe convince mom to make us some more of that Valentine cocoa.  Upon entering the living room, I saw mom staring out our sliding glass doors, watching as it began to sleet again.  In one hand she held our mustard yellow rotary phone with the 10ft long curly cord, with the other hand, she coiled the cord around her fingers and kept it from dragging the ground.  Her worried face searched the clouds as she spoke.  After a few Mmmhmm's of agreement, she crossed the living room and hung up the phone.  Turning, she saw us standing there and jumped.  "Oh!  Girls, you scared me."  We giggled at our accidental mischief.  "There's another storm moving in and Simona's parents want her home.  They're afraid if we don't get her home now she could be snowed in with us for days."  Looking first at each other and then at my mom, we begged for her to stay long enough to be snowed in.  "No, girls, they're right.  They're worried and would rather have you safe with them, Simona.  Quick as you can, go pack, so we  can get going."  We were not quick.  

"Get dressed and a grab a coat!" Mom yelled from the opposite end of the house.  Simona's house was only 20 minutes from mine and since we'd been playing all day in our pajamas, it didn't make much sense to get dressed now.  While she shoved clothes into her bag, I picked up her dolls and handed them to her.  Mom yelled from the living room that we had to go, and realizing we had delayed as long as possible we gave in and went to put our shoes on.  Dressed only in my pajamas, and a snow hat I put on to help with the cold in my room, I grabbed an old pair of snow boots and pulled them on over my bare feet.  Hopping into our rusty old farm truck, we set out for town. I started to chatter to mom about all the things we had done on our sleepover, but she shushed me, saying she needed to concentrate.  Mom wasn't a shusher by nature, so this must be serious.  We crunched through the slush and ice of our dirt road; then came the hill.  The same hill that our school bus had nearly plummeted from two years earlier on a snowy day like this. Ignoring the stop sign at the end of our dirt road, she hit the gas as we approached the hill hoping to have enough speed to crest it, but we started sliding back down.  She let us slide to the bottom and then tried again with more gas.  Since seatbelts were for wimps in the 80s, we didn't put them on, but Simona and I did grab each other's hands as we slid down the hill backwards.  Mom stared straight ahead, let out a sigh, set her jaw and hit the gas again.  This time we made it nearly to the top when we started sliding sideways, fishtailing toward the the side of the hill.  Looking out my window at the sheer drop on my side of the road, I decided to be as reasonable as possible and scream my head off until mom came to her senses and stopped the truck.  Being thoroughly familiar with my antics, mom was undeterred.  Fighting for control she kept at it until I, frustrated that my concerns in the form of terrified girlish screams were being ignored, decided to do what grown-ups always encouraged me to do when overwhelmed by strong emotion and use my words.

"Mom, are you out of your mind?!  You're not a very good driver and you're going to get us all killed!  You nearly killed me once with this stupid truck and now you're back to finish the job, I knew it, I knew it!"  Mom's face whipped around with the most macabre blend of shock and confusion I had ever seen.  I had her attention, now to bring the point home.  "Mom, it's not worth it.  You can't handle this! Please don't get us killed!  Stop the truck!  Stop the truck!"  Frustrated but confidence-shaken, mom let the truck slide to a stop and put it in park.  She sat for a moment looking at me, before announcing, "We can't make it.  We'll have to walk home."  Relieved that cooler heads had prevailed, I scrambled out of the truck, jumping down onto the hillside, Slosh! onto the sleet covered ground.  I grabbed Simona's hand and mom grabbed mine as we plodded down the steep hill.  After just three steps, the holes in my boots provided easy access to the freezing water on the ground.  A few steps later, I realized that my thin polyester flannel pajamas may be flame retardant, but they were not made to double as arctic hiking gear.    "Mom, I'm cold."  I said, knowing she would use this as an opportunity to remind me that I had been told to dress appropriately, but instead and without looking down, she replied, "This is ridiculous.  I could have made it."  I looked at Simona, who though cold, had dressed appropriately and in lieu of sacrificing one of her layers to keep me warm, put an arm around me instead.  Thirty frigid minutes later, we stomped the ice off our shoes and stepped back inside our house.   I kicked off my soggy boots and Simona and I made a B-line for the fireplace while mom called Simona's parents to tell them if they ever wanted to see their daughter again, they'd have to strap on their snow chains and collect her themselves.  While Simona and I excitedly whispered about the possibility of her having to stay two or three days extra, her parents were already hard at work in their crowded garage locating their snow chains.  An hour later she was on her way home and my feet had finally returned to their normal healthy color.

My own children, having never been in a similar situation, always dress like everywhere they're going is 78º and sunny, no matter how many times I yell at them to take a coat and some sensible shoes.  I suppose there are some lessons we all must learn the hard way.   About a year later, on a rainy day in April, my mother learned the hard way both not to leave the gas bill unpaid until 4:45 on a Friday afternoon and that her driving skills were not as solid as she thought, but that's a story for another time, and I learned that snowy day in February to always dress like you'll have to walk home.  It's a lesson I have never forgot and to this very day, no matter how I am dressed or what the weather, I always make sure to have a coat and some sensible shoes in the car with me, which is why, even in these snowy day pics in a beautiful gown, taken not too far from my own front door, I wearing my good old reliable farm boots to get me back home again.