Not much, but enough to bring back the magical joy of childhood in England when my mother would wrap us all in warm clothes and positively rush us outside to build a snowman as soon as we had half an inch of snow! Clearly I get my urgency to go build something from her, along with the Raynaud’s syndrome that makes it harder to do so without numb fingers. Although I have lived in areas where snow is expected for more than half my life, I still love snow. Nine years in upstate New York did not dim it, even when my shovel had to pile snow above my head (I was younger then) and the plow came by and threw it all back as soon as I had cleared out my driveway. We seem to get less and less snow in New Jersey, but for years when it did snow I would rush outside and build snow creatures, sometimes before I shovelled. Rabbits if the snow was just frozen enough for the ears, a cat one year, a unicorn (although it looked more like a llama), a mouse I was very fond of — that was perfect snow.
The rabbit was part of a collage of drive by pictures on the local news (anonymous). I did make more traditional humans, including a couple siting, linked arms, on a bench in Central Park with Françoise, her then husband, and my oldest niece. They looked especially good wearing a beret and scarf, but we had long reclaimed our accessories when a photographer passed by, but that’s how my naked snow folks made it to the front page of the New York Times. (Sadly that picture is also long gone, but we found this picture of me, before we put the legs and scarf on the second person.)
I like making seated figures — less lifting and balancing and the base can be smaller. Plus you can add legs. When you make use of a chair with arms, even more things are possible. So much fun! In case anyone worries, I kept my snow women out of sight of the road lest they offended passers-by, especially those associated with the Church of the Holy Cross pre-school across the road. In contrast, I made the large animals close to the road so the children could see them when they came out of school, and of course they were delighted — one bought her whole family to see “el gato.”
The “women doing life” series were purely for my (and Walter’s) entertainment. Guess my favorite.
In the last few years we lived in North Plainfield I started making little porch and fence post critters to entertain myself and neighbors, mostly about a foot high and sitting at the top or bottom of our porch steps (the first one in the gallery below is waving from inside the historic marker urn in front of my former neighbor’s house). If it snowed at halloween I made a ghost like the one with the purple bow; after Thanksgiving, a pumpkin person; during covid they had masks. Some were even humanoid. They entertained me as I rushed out of the door the next day on my way to work. And they entertain me still!
I will miss that kind of snow when I move here full-time, and probably won’t make it to the US in winter often, but I will still delight in it and maybe we will get enough in France for some little snow critters next time . . . .
Before it snowed here yesterday, it snowed in Paris and my cousin sent pictures of waking up to the first snow in the garden of his new house. Later, as it started snowing here I began seeing pictures of Paris in online news outlets, snowboarding in Montmartre, skiing by the Louvre. There was not a lot of snow, but people were as excited as me.
Okay. I can deal with that!
