And I will still be carrying you when you are old.
Your hair will turn gray, and I will still carry you.
I made you, and I will carry you to safety.
—Isaiah 46:4, ERV
It is one thing to sit in my warm winter house with a book on my lap, staring at the ice cubes bobbing in a glass of water in my old, wrinkled hand, and another thing to feel the pull of memories about being a boy who delighted in his relationship with winter and ice.
Part of being a boy in winter was being cold with red cheeks, wearing wide black boots, and pretending to be a dragon as the mist from my mouth came out looking like smoke. I made my way to invade the kingdom of the garage and steal icicles.
In one postcard winter of long ago I discovered that the garage was where the best icicles hung because there were no gutters. I grabbed a stick (my lance, of course) and tapped an icicle until it wiggled free like a loose tooth and fell into my hands.
I took my icicle and ran into the house to create my own winter treat. I opened the lid of the sugar container, poked the tip of the icicle into the sugar, and licked my ice-candy stick with delight and pride, thinking how clever I was to create such a delicious concoction. But a boy is a king until his mother approaches the kitchen and the boy runs out the back door and retreats to Wonderland, or to Narnia.
The swamp behind the woods was my Wonderland, my escape from the ordinary world of brothers and sisters, cats and television. This was the place, especially in winter, where snow was whiter and ice thicker, where small children ice-skated past bulrushes and the big kids played hockey.
Each time I visited the swamp in winter I knelt and began rubbing my glove onto the ice, polishing it as if it was a magic lantern. The ice was magic when it was translucent, and I saw goldfish swimming under me like dancing Japanese women with their orange flowing robes and orange fans.
In winter, it seems, kids like to make their mark, leaving behind evidence that they were there. We fell backward and created angels in the white drifts of snow. We threw snowballs against the side of the house, leaving a temporary white stain honoring our marksmanship. I liked taking my hand and pressing it against the ice on the living room window, leaving my handprint on the glass.
Today I attack the ice on my brick steps with blends of sodium chloride, calcium chloride, or magnesium chloride—all salt, the enemy of ice. I vigorously chop it with a thick blade at the end of a long handle and, with force, rake it off the windshield of my car with a hard-plastic scraper. I do violence on the ice that covers my driveway, but then in my quiet time, I am back on the couch, and the book on my lap comes alive.
Alice, in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, is talking to her cat and says, “Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if someone was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently?”
The memories of winter and ice kiss me gently as I pick up my book and pause for a moment longer and think that perhaps smooth ice is a path to paradise, and then I adjust my glasses, open my book, and continue reading.
Covet love. Covet a warm blanket and a book on your lap.
There is more to our silence and old age than in the beating of our hearts,
So let us dream, pray, rest, and prepare our way to the Lord with confidence.