I hide in my own little fort, piled high with blankets and pillows. I study the yellow and orange faded colors with weird soft, fluffy, warm fabrics, as I lay there quietly thinking to myself. The sun shines in through my shutters, like bright yellow fingers, saving me from my prison, even though the shutters are closed. I get up and the blankets tumble into neat, imperfect piles all around me. The air is cold, so cold I can sense the numbness creeping up through my toes and fingertips. It thinks I wont see it coming. I reach for the window, but before I can even touch it, the condensation builds up in a small circle that is slowly growing outward. When my fingertip hits the window, the feelings like a shock of electricity; my finger instantly grows cold and numb. The cold makes me feel weird, like I’m disintegrating from the inside out. I instantly pull away and the heat is restored back to my body. I let my toes leave the ground, and I fall backwards, slowly but surely hitting that neat, but imperfect pile of blankets and pillows, which are now my safe haven, and the only place I want to be. The descent is slowly burying me deeper and deeper into the pile, but this sensation is not bad but a pleasant feeling. This I enjoy, feeling the heat and warm and yet cold and soft against my body. There’s nothing quite like it.

Suddenly, a loud voice comes from downstairs.

“Kristin, come down for dinner.” The voice calls.

It’s hard to make out because the sound of my brother Thor playing the piano is overlapping the sound of the voice.
I decide that the voice is my mom’s calling me down for dinner.

“Alright, be right down!” I yell back so my mom can hear.

“Come’on boys, time to eat.” My mom nags, as if she is annoyed.

I slowly descend the stairs, as I smell the usual scent of fish coming from the kitchen. This is a cozy, comfortable scent, what usually happened in my house, someone is always doing something.

My mom and I make small talk.

“Mm, this smells delicious mom.” I stuttered as I smell the fish; I would much rather enjoy lasagna but I don’t say that, because I know that if I do ill be spanked.

“Why thank you so much darling,” My mom answers me slowly, waiting for me to ask what I really wanted to talk about. She knows me too well.

“Mom, when do you think the snow will show up?” I ask concerned.

“Hunny, I’m not sure, but it looks like sometime within the hour.” She answers me kindly but still in a tone where I know not to ask her again; she must be worried about something.

After that we ate in silence. You could have cut the tension in the air with a knife.

I finish eating and move my self downstairs to start watching Happy Days; but the episode that’s on I have already seen. So, I start watching Grease.

Suddenly, my father come in and forces me to get off the TV. I leave willingly but not before I listen to the news about people getting stuck at stores such as, Bells, a local grocery store only a five-minute walk from my house.

The doorbell rings, my mom and I run to get it, she opens the door and shoos me away; this is our neighbor informing her on the newest news on Jimmy Carter. He sometimes comes over, but this is what they usually talk about.

My mom’s voice changes drastically from comfortable to horrid, her jaw drops. I guess this time it wasn’t about our president.

Heavy winds move in through the door and nearly knock me off my feet. The door slams, and it bellows throughout the house.

I run upstairs and see snow blowing past my bedroom window. I feel like I could jump out my second story window. And when the snow came. It came within an hour two. It just hit.

Suddenly I felt exhausted and I fell onto my newly changed sheets, It was one of my favorite feelings, smelling the clean, crisp, bed; it was like I was melting into the bed. I slowly drift to sleep.

I awoke to our neighbor Mr. Boumer using his new snow blower on our driveway! He was the first one on our street to get a snow blower. 

I quickly get ready for school and run outside to catch the school bus.

“Hello, sir,” I quietly whisper towards Mr. Boumer.
“Hello, Miss,” he greets me shyly.

I walk away smiling, his shy hello always makes me smile.

Throughout my day in school, I greet friends, and attempt to learn something about Mother Teresa in history class.

I eventually give up.

I am on the school bus coming home from a long day at school. The snow outside was ridiculous.  When I got home I was so happy to be there.

My mom was running around the house nervously waiting for my brothers to come home from school, Thor never did. The suspense was building up as we waited for him to walk through the door was excruciating. The house was too quiet there was no music. It seemed as though everyone else was coming through the house except him; even our neighbors came over, they announced that the middle school and high school buses were down and the kids would have to spend the night at the school and come home in the morning.
This was Thursday.

I wake up to an early Friday morning, and I’m starting to get used to the faint hymn of the snow blower waking me up right below my window. It’s almost comforting.

I dress in a rush and hurry outside to greet my neighbors Timmy, Colleen, Billy, and Mary-Beth.

Everyone that was stuck at his or her homes were outside shoveling snow out of their driveways to go pick up loved ones that were not stuck at homes.

There was crazy high snow everywhere; you couldn’t go anywhere because there was so much snow.
School was canceled all this week and next week, so we have all day and more to play in the newly landed snow.
It seemed like forever since we last had school, cancelled. It was once in a blue moon that we had a snow day.
We jump and play in the snow as the winds blow all around us. We are excited about the snow and the cold is refreshing.

“Eeekkkkk!” Mary-Beth screams as she flies down the hill on her favorite purple sled.

This seems like fun.

I join in. I climb to the top of the hill and on my way up I slip! “Whoa, that was a close one, the snow is so slippery!” I chuckle. On my way to the bottom of the hill I fall off again, only this time it was off of my sled! “Ah! The snow is so cold!” I giggle with delight!

Everyone else joins in until we get bored and move onto something else.

We start crawling through the snow and slowly but surly dig out tunnels under the snow, these tunnels we made were growing longer and longer each day of the week until they reached to the neighbors houses.
We would travel through these to each other’s houses.

It was some of the most fun I have ever had.

Our blue house was completely covered in snow, and our white farm fence that surrounded our house had disappeared in the snow. It makes me sad, I loved to sit and walk on that farm fence, or jump off of it and into the snow piles but I can’t even find it!

I hear a rumble making its way down my street, and I suddenly remember Thor. He’s coming home from school!

I run inside and call for the rest of my family to greet him.

“Come down everyone! Thor’s home!” I joyfully yell. “Come’on! Mom, Dad, Per, Knut, Paul!” I scream gleefully.

We all come out to see most of the neighborhood has done the same! Everyone in our neighborhood it seems is out greeting the kids and making sure they are ok, they seem to be.

During this time when I was greeting my brother on making it home, stuck surrounded by snow, I learned something very important, and I would never forget it. The snow trapping me made me keenly aware of nature’s wrath, it gave me a respect for nature: you really have to be careful.

As I am back in my bedroom now lying on my soft bedspread surrounded by the warm colors of yellow, orange and red, I find complete serenity. The house is loud, the piano is playing, the fish is cooking, and everyone is safe.