Lolly hopped up and down. “Let’s get ready to have some fun!” she said, pulling Arden by the hand back into the cabin. “How about some pancakes first, and then we’ll build a snowman … and then a snow fort … and then make snow ice cream … and…”
“Mother!” Arden interrupted. “It’s only snow. And I don’t really like snow. I only like the days off school.”
Lolly stopped and stooped in front of her daughter. “What a silly thing to say. Who doesn’t like snow? It’s magical.”
“It’s cold and wet,” Arden said. “How’s it magical?”
“Let’s have some breakfast, and then I’ll show you!”
*
“The secret to a great snowman,” Lolly said to Arden, her words coming out as big puffs of smoke into the frigid air, “is its pack-ability. See?”
“The what?” Arden asked, folding her arms around herself, her glasses fogged over from the cold.
Lolly smiled at her daughter. At first glance, the ten-year-old looked as if she was seemingly trying to ward off the cold, but Lolly knew it was more than that: She was trying to ward off the frigidity of the world.
Arden had always been that way.
Lolly bent down and picked up two huge handfuls of snow, recalling all of the comments Arden’s teachers made on her report cards: Arden is smart and a great writer but is very sensitive, shy, and unaware of her beauty, talents, and dimensions that make her unique. She seeks to please others too easily. She doesn’t stand up for herself.
“See?” Lolly said, pushing her hands together to make a ball. “Lake-effect snow is too dry, so you have to put some extra heat into it to make it melt a little. Then it’s perfect. Your turn,” Lolly said.
Arden gathered a tiny ball of snow, which disintegrated in her hands.
Lolly again smiled at her daughter, and trudged through the snow. She kissed her daughter’s stocking-capped head. An inch of newly fallen snow toppled off the top of Arden’s head as if her mother had just knocked it off with a broom.
“Follow my lead,” Lolly said, turning in a wide circle to gather the base for the snowman, pushing snow into a large mound.
Mother and daughter worked silently in tandem as the snow hissed around them, their grunts and pats echoing in the quiet, white world. When they were finished, a nearly four-foot round, plump sentinel stood quietly on the hill as if to protect their little log cabin and the frozen lake below.
“Is it time for hot chocolate?” Arden asked. “I’m getting cold and wet.”
“Oh, we’re not done yet, my dear,” Lolly said. “We still have to give her a little personality to bring her to life, just like Frosty. Wait here!”
Her? Arden thought.
Lolly trudged through the snow, now hip deep on her, leaving a meandering trail behind her. She returned a minute later carrying a plastic bag.
“First things first,” Lolly laughed, setting the bag atop the snow and plucking out a feather boa. “To keep our snow woman warm and stylish.”
“Frosty is a boy, Mom!” Arden protested. “He can’t wear that!”
“Ours is a snow woman! And snow women can be even more magical, my dear,” Lolly said. “She just needs a piece of us—our history—a little extra dimension to make her shine in this world.”
Lolly pulled out a pair of large blue buttons and stuck them on the snow woman’s face followed by a pair of fake eyelashes as big as butterflies. Next came a carrot for a nose and smaller red buttons for lips. Pink buttons trailed down the snow woman’s front.
“Over there,” Lolly said to Arden, motioning to a pine tree. “Get us a couple of those fallen branches.”
When Arden returned, Lolly attached them as arms, placing an old purse in her piney hands.
“And now? The finishing touch!” Lolly said, yanking out a straw hat—drenched in spring flowers—and placing it on the snow woman’s head with a flourish. “Voilà!”
Lolly and Arden took a step back to admire their work.
“What do you see when you look at our snow woman?” Lolly asked.
Arden’s face still registered confusion.
“I thought snowmen were men,” Arden asked. “That they couldn’t be women.”
Lolly let out a deep sigh that lingered, frozen, in front of her face. She grabbed her daughter’s hand. “You can create and be anything in this world that you want to be,” she said, shaking her mitten, her bracelet jangling in the silence. “Your imagination should be limitless.”
Lolly continued. “Didn’t you know that people are just like snowflakes? No two are alike.”
“Really?” Arden asked.
Lolly lifted her face to the sky and let the snowflakes gather on her eyelashes. When she blinked, they caught in the wind and went flying.
“You bet,” Lolly said. “As snowflakes fall from the sky, they each take a different path to reach the earth. They float and flicker through clouds and cold, taking shape in a unique way, just like us. Every snowflake takes a different journey to the ground that makes it unique. Sometimes it’s hard for them to make it all the way here to us, but they do, still holding on to all those wonderful dimensions that make them different from every other snowflake in the world.”