Surprise: A Lesson

In the 1970’s in Puerto Rico, when I programmed computers for a living, I came home tired from a day longer and tougher than usual. At the door my wife informed me, “Your children have been horrible all day. I’m dead tired. You take care of them. You can put them to bed. Read them something–that works pretty well.”
I looked for something to read to them and found only torn pages from a few books.
When I mentioned this to my wife, she replied, “Tell them a story of when you were a boy. I’m going to sleep now.” She disappeared down the hall.
My childhood would bore these children. Good, I thought: they’ll go to sleep that much sooner. After telling them to get their pajamas on and all that, I gathered them into the boys’ bedroom. “Your mother says you’d like to hear about when I was a boy.” Three faces looked back at me: Steven, Diana, and Eddie. Their expressions betrayed neither boredom nor interest. Mentally, I groped for some kind of inspiration–ANY kind. I looked around the room for a while before I noted a few Christmas toys that had so far survived.
Winter and Christmas.
“Our family put up a tree, too. Just like we do today. One Christmas your Aunts Marcia and Laura got bikes that came in big boxes. They had to put them together, though. That took them most of the morning. They wanted to ride them, but your grandfather and grandmother wouldn’t let them take them outside, since the roads hadn’t been cleared yet.” Three pairs of eyes had not closed nor even blinked.
“One year we all got sleds and took them outside and up a hill where we built a little ramp and slid down the hill, over the ramp through the air for a little jump and on down the rest of the hill. We had to dodge a stone wall our next-door neighbor put up. But that was easy. Other kids in the neighborhood joined us and some helped with the ramp and we all had a lot of fun.”
“One day after a snowstorm, your Aunt Marcia went outside, barefoot, and made angels in the snow.” Three faces looked blank, puzzled, uncomprehending. “She often did that, though your Aunt Laura and I didn’t do it beyond the first time. For us it wasn’t that much fun. You lie down in the snow and sweep your arms through the snow from your waist to up above your shoulders and you move your legs like a broom sweeping back and forth. When you get up you see a picture like an angel on the Christmas tree.” I paused for breath.
“Papi, ¿Qué cosa e’ la nieve?” Daddy, what’s snow? my youngest had asked. His brother and sister also looked to me for an answer.
That stopped me. I realized only Steven had seen snow when he was but a year old. He would not remember. And the other two had never had never seen a winter with snow. If the three of them saw anything on television or at the movies, they had forgotten. But how could I explain snow to them?
My brain had gone on strike, on vacation, shut down for the winter. I sat there looking at the young faces awaiting an answer. Just sat. Tried to think. And did not come up with a nice ready-made explanation. I ran my thoughts over the house and areas we had visited together. After a short eternity, I grasped at the only straw I could see.
“You remember the refrigerator and the part where Mami keeps the ice cream?” Three nods. I lucked out there: what child would NOT know where such goodies were kept?
“Okay. On the side of that box, there’s a white frost that your mother cleans off every so often.” More nods. “Think of having everything outside covered with that frosty stuff, as deep as your ankles. It covers everything outside. Everything is covered in this white blanket until people clean the roads and sidewalks, or it melts in the sun. That frost all over is snow. Understand?”
Three slow nods. Three doubting expressions. I continued my story, citing ice skating and skiing as particularly good fun until the youngest’s eyes started to droop and close.
“Okay. That’s it. Bedtime.” And without argument they went to bed and asleep.
Next day when I came home again, my wife asked me, “What did you tell them?”
“About our winters and Christmases in New England. Like you said. Why, what’s wrong?”
“I heard Diana asking Steven if he believed the things you told them. He said, ‘No way. He told us that stuff ’cause he doesn’t know any good stories.’”
Later I reflected upon these events. My children spoke only Spanish and I had become fairly fluent. But what gave me pause was the knowledge that had someone told me ten or twelve years before, that I would be explaining snow–in Spanish–to children who had no idea what it was like and that the children would be my own, I’d have put in a call to the white coats and the people in charge of the rubber rooms.

John Sayre