Tracks in the Snow

This morning before school, Daniel set up the checkers board on the floor to play with Matthew. Of course, the twins have only the vaguest notion of the rules of the game so Daniel usually had to tell his opponent which move to make. All was well until one of Daniel's black checkers reached Matthew's side of the board.

"King me!" he declared, triumphantly.

Matthew gave him a blank look.

"Here," said Daniel, grabbing one of the black pieces Matthew had captured and putting it on his king.

"Daniel!" yelled Matthew, trying to take the piece back.

"Those are the rules, Matthew!" Daniel yelled back. "Mama!"

"Sorry, Matthew, he's right. When you get one of your pieces over to his side, he'll have to king you," I said.

"Hmmph!" said Matthew. "Then I'm not playing." He stood up to leave, but not before giving the board a shove with his toe, scattering the pieces.

Daniel was livid. "Matthew! You wrecked the game!"

I sent Matthew upstairs for that little display of temper. Stephen said, "I'll play with you, Daniel. And I won't kick the board."

Daniel was still mad about the wrecked game, however. "Matthew is stuny, that's good enough for me!" he sang out, loud enough so that Matthew could hear him from his room

Matthew, who had been defiant up until that moment, started crying bitterly. "Stuny" is his word, and he hates having it used against him.

A heavy, wet snow started falling this morning around 8 a.m. The meteorologists were predicting two to three inches to be followed by freezing rain changing to all rain later in the day. By the time we got to Daniel's school at 9, slightly more than an inch had fallen, enough to coat the sidewalks and streets. Fortunately, the driving was not difficult at that point.

We had to park halfway down the block from the school and walk the rest of the way. The rapidly falling snow looked rather pretty. It felt like we were walking inside one of those snow globes you shake up.

"Look, Mama! We're making tracks," said Stephen. "Look at my trackses."

I looked. I saw three sets of footprints in the otherwise unmarked snow: two smaller sets, the same size and the same pattern, interspersed with a larger set with a deeper imprint. Sometimes the footprints were widely spaced where the boys had run for a few steps; sometimes they were closer together. They criss-crossed each other, intertwining in a complicated pattern.

I thought briefly of Sherlock Holmes who could deduce so much from a footprint. Then I found myself thinking of this journal. Writing about our day to day life is my own version of snow tracks, in which I preserve those everyday things that leave an impression on my heart and mind as the boys' shoes did on the snow.

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