Snow

On the road to Ballarat today I said to Leonard Look there's snow under the trees! There was: biggish deposits that looked remarkably fresh.

It shook us out of our trances. I pulled off the freeway at the first exit and we stopped on the wet gravelly shoulder of one of those country intersections where old roads abut newer ones. There were at least twenty other cars excitedly abandoned there. We got out, thrilled to the bone, and scrambled across sodden and watery grass and red mud and got up on a hill covered in fresh light snow which was already half-trodden into grey slush.

Crossing the slippery ditch between the road and the hill, Lenny stepped right into a stream of icy water. I saw his whole foot go in right up to the ankle. Another adult nearby laughed a little, as I might also have done, I'm not really sure: the immediate idea being to reassure the little boy and show him it's all right and nothing to worry about.

And yet he was deeply worried.  Mum I don't like my foot being wet, can we go now, he said in a very small voice. He then lit up with happiness, and played with the amazing snow, made snowballs and threw them at me, poked it and kicked it; but he continued to talk about his wet foot and how he wanted to leave while we played and walked up and down. In the car I got his shoes and socks off and wrapped his feet in a rug. That's only the second time in my life I've seen snow, he remarked to me as we drove on, and then he told me, babbling with happiness, about snow angels, snowmen, snow days, snow ploughs; things he's read about in children's books from the other half of the world.

On the hill I felt almost violently protective of him, in the intense cold and the constant likelihood of one or both of us falling over and getting very wet and filthy, but also in the wake of the rude shock he received from the cold water, and the sensation of instant and deep calamity which visited him when he realised his entire shoe was wet. I wanted him to disregard it and enjoy the rare and magical surprise of snow, but I also felt how his foot must feel so disastrously cold, and how he must be afraid that something is ruined and can't be fixed. There are events in one's life as a parent that bring you hard up against feelings you had when you were small yourself and something happened that you couldn't handle. The difference is that if you are lucky, you have somehow learnt, in the intervening years, that you will actually be okay, despite everything. In conveying this to your own child you can convey it to yourself when young, too.