Use your imagination

Yesterday was a snow day (yes, how wonderful to have an unexpected four-day weekend) and after the 20-minute task of stuffing them into snow clothes, I took the girls outside to play in the snow. It was fun for a while. The little one is really good at just going with the flow and doing her own thing, so she took a shovel and started making a road through the yard. The big one? She wanted a snow house. Okay, fine, good idea. You'd think that would keep her occupied. You'd think an almost-8-year-old would busy herself with gathering snow and building the house. But what you might not know is that this particular almost-8-year-old is not a worker bee. She wanted to be the architect. She had a vision of the building - the walls, the door, the windows, the roof (yes, I said roof). And that vision was to be executed by me. I loved the way she went about it too. She made her sister feel like she was a part of the whole process, but really she was just a grunt, piling snow on top of snow, trying to construct a wall. My mom tried to explain to her oldest grandchild that she had no sense of reality - that it was nearly impossible to construct this edifice with our primitive tools (our hands). The architect poo-pooed the silly old bird and pushed her crew on. Of course, I gave in. On my hands and knees, I was pushing and packing snow and trying (in vain) to make a snow wall. Now, if that happened when I was a kid, no parents would have been around to help and we would have made a fort or whatever we could and been happy with it. At this point in my life, I have no imagination. I don't see things in the grand way that children do. Maybe I never did. But, my mom saved the day. Well, her imagination did. The walls were supposed to be about three feet high. But, once they got about a foot tall, my mom suggested using branches on top of the walls to make a fence. The architect liked it! We were in the clear.... but what about the roof? Um, the roof, right. I looked pleadingly at my mom - the lady who takes a box and makes it into a fancy dollhouse, the woman who turns yarn into the best toy a kid could ask for, the one who intrigues my girls with buttons and fabric and paint. I'm thinking I could find a sheet or a tarp in the garage and throw it on top. But, I'm just a dumb worker bee. Gammy just found some longer branches and positioned them across the top to make a roof. She pleased the architect and cleaned up the yard of fallen branches all at once. The girls were thrilled with their creation. Their grandmother then suggested that when the snow melts in the spring that they re-use the fallen branches to weave a fence. God help me - I'm staying inside from now on!