Snow doubt

I am ambivalent about snow.

On one hand, snow can be a source of tremendous misery. It makes driving and parking difficult, especially when the plows just push the dirty slush onto the sides of the roads where the cars are parked, guaranteeing that no one will be leaving or getting back into their spots. That is, unless they drive a Hummer. I'm told this lack of basic civil services is unique to Chicago. The snow banks are piled so high that I have to carry my children from the sidewalks to the cars, lest they sink waist high into the grey mounds. They wouldn't mind so much. They think it's the neatest stuff on Earth! You can throw it, build with it, eat it, and slide on it! It gets you wet and icky, but doesn't stain. What's not to love? I suppose my problem isn't the snow itself, but the way people around here simply ignore it, or shove it to the side, making it somebody else's problem. Snow brings out the worst in Chicagoans' nature.

Winter has been hard on us. The single digit temperatures have turned me into a recluse, and by association, the kids as well. Friday night brought another couple of inches of snow and another dip in temperatures. But by Sunday, things had begun to warm up a bit, and our synagogue was sponsoring an Uncle Moishy concert that day. I finally had a compelling reason to escape the warmish confines of my apartment, and release my stir-crazy kids.

I strapped the baby into the cantilevered stroller and headed out on this balmy 32 degree day to the synagogue with the two kids skipping and stomping in their snow boots by my side. This was my first time to venture outdoors since the first snows of the year fell. It felt great to be breathing in the fresh air.

The joy lasted about 50 feet, when I came across the first stretch of sidewalk covered in snow and ice.

The front-heavy stroller struggled against the slush, and ground to a halt. I put my back into it, hauled up the nose, weighted down by my toddler, and wheelied it through to dry ground, which lasted another ten feet. More ice and snow followed another fifteen feet down. and another ten feet after that.

I grumbled and muttered under my breath at the lazy thoughtless Chicagoans who carefully cleared a parking space in front of their buildings and blocked them off with plastic chairs, yet made pushing a stroller an impossible, back-breaking task. The closer we got to synagogue, the worse the sidewalks got. By the time we were a block from the concert, I was in tears, flushed from the strenuous effort, and yelling in my cell phone to my law student husband,

Who the hell can we sue?! This whole damn city is out of compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act!

The low point came when, stuck in a river of melting snow and ice floes, I threw up a fist and shouted to the closed windows of an empty house, Just shovel your darned sidewalks! The girls looked at me with a mixture of amusement and fear. My son raised his fists, and shouted alongside his hysterical mother, "Yeah! Shovel your sidewalks, you lazy..."

Okay, dear, we're going to be late for Uncle Moishy! I stammered, embarrassed at the horrible behavior I had just modelled for my impressionable son. Horrible, but thoroughly justified.

Uncle Moishy is the Orthodox Jewish world's Captain Kangaroo. He's a plump and jolly fellow with a bushy beard, disarmingly sweet big front teeth, and a black hat with a paper Hebrew letter "Mem" taped to it. He even has a "Mister Greenjeans" type sidekick who runs out on stage in a series of half-priced Halloween costume rejects, like an adult-sized Bob the Builder (sorry, Boruch the Builder), the Cat in the Hat (whose name happens to be Ketzel), and a giraffe (a kosher animal, in case you didn't know). He's been doing this shtick for decades, entertaining kids with songs about Jewish laws and customs like keeping kosher, keeping Shabbat, and I swear I snapped out of my stupor long enough to catch a ditty about circumcision. It went something like:

I'm so happy to be a Jew!

All the mitzvos I get to do!

Keeping kosher is the best

And Shabbos is the day I get to rest.

But none of the mitzvos get me as weepy

As when they cut off the end of my peepee!

Oy! Avraham did it and Moishe, too

Who said it's easy to be a Jew?

We just missed the target age for Uncle Moishy's audience, which apparently is between two and three. Princess Crazy Hair lost interest in the music after the third song, and started looking for spotlights to pull down. The ballerina clapped along half-heartedly, but looked at me beseechingly between songs. "Can we go yet?". My son sulked and pouted, and complained that it was giving him a headache. Mostly he ducked under his seat hoping no one would see him there.

A friend informed me that, had I set foot outside of my apartment anytime during the last dozen or so Shabbats, I would see bands of strollers cruising down the middle of the streets of West Rogers Park, as families went to and from synagogue. I pictured them in tricked out strollers and leather jackets, drag racing down Mozart street. I thought I'd give it a try, but West Rogers Park is a different place on Shabbat. Fewer cars roam the roads. On a warm Sunday afternoon, they were all out, crawling at a snail's pace behind me, my kids, and the stroller. And they were honking for me to get out of the way, which meant pushing the kids straight into a snow bank.

All I could do was raise my fists and shout, Shovel your darn sidewalks! My kids raised their fists in solidarity.

Our first outing was a bust, but I was determined to make sure we had a better time on Monday, President's Day. I was intent on finding pleasure in the precipitation.

In the morning I loaded the kids into the minivan. Our first stop was the hair salon for a much needed trim. The ballerina got her usual, "Dora cut", and my son got his usual, "number four". Whatever that was, he looked quite handsome.

Looking clean cut and dapper, I took the kids to a place I have been excited to take them since we moved here: Illinois Nut & Candy, the largest kosher candy store in the Midwest. My children's eyes grew big, and their jaws dropped as they looked around at shelves and shelves of shiny, brightly colored treats and mouth-watering chocolates. I smiled as I informed them, it's all kosher. And I let them pick out one candy each. My daughter went for a big brown and white Fantasia Purim chocolate, and my son grabbed a chocolate mint candy stick. I stuffed a few red Swedish Fish into the baby's mouth to distract her from her search and destroy mission. It was mostly successful. I only had to buy a couple additional candies that I had not intended to eat.

The sacrifices of motherhood.

After that we headed for one of my Skokie girl's homes for pizza. In addition to her four kids, she was babysitting another little four year old. While I drove out to grab the pizza, she cranked up some music, and transformed her home into Daycare Dance Fever. The two toddlers Ring-Around-the-Rosied, the three preschool girls flitted about on tippy-toes, and the three boys BREAKDANCED? I didn't know my kid knew what that was, but there he was, trying to spin around on his posterior. We fed them, bundled them up, and headed to the "slopes", which were more like a gently sloping drainage area.

The boys ran off in one direction with their sleds, and in no time were jumping off of snow mounds, "catching air" (at least two centimeters). By the end, they were riding their sleds down snowboarding style, talking about their "Whack" rides, and "shredding".

Who was this breakdancing, slope shredding kid? Could it be that my son was that cool? It dawned on me what an affront Uncle Moishy was to his burgeoning manhood. Mea maxima culpa.

I was amazed at how bravely my diva attacked the slopes with her sled. Usually shy and dainty, she went after them with a fearless ferocity. Until her mittens got wet.

The cutest part of the afternoon was putting he two toddlers on a sled and pushing them down the hill. They looked like a couple of stay puf't marshmallow men with nothing but eyes and fingertips peaking out of their snow suits. They slowly sledded down the hill, and stopped at the bottom, unable to move, just sitting there at the bottom looking around, unsure if this was fun or not. Unsure of what to do next, they sat, puffy and confused, and cute as can be. My Skokie girl and I ran down, picked them up, and carried them up the hill, put them on the sled again, and gently pushed it down again. At the bottom, they didn't move, they didn't speak, they just sat wide eyed, and never protested when we did it again, and again, and again.

I got my workout, which was good, considering the extra candies I was forced to eat.

We sledded for over an hour, and came home happy and exhausted. I gave the kids hot chocolate, a bath, and supper, and sent them to bed early, fully expecting them to collapse.

But nothing ever works out as planned. Snow, which was a bitter impediment the day before, was a catalyst for fun the next day.

And kids, who should have been thoroughly tuckered out, found a second wind at bedtime.