The Fifth Snowman in the Front Yard

The hill

We spent the rest of the morning on the hill behind the Lutheran church. The kids unwrapped their signs in the yard first. I’ll tell you about that.

Jace opened his and didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he ran his thumb along the hockey stick. “You made this,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“On Grandpa Walt’s saw,” I said.

“When?”

“Every night since November. After you guys were asleep.”

He held it against his chest with both arms and didn’t let go of it for an hour. He carried it to the sledding hill and stood it up in a snowbank where he could see it.

Brody wanted to know if the tractor would go. Kenzie traced every letter of her name with one mitten. Lily hugged her star and then announced it was going on her wall right now, and we had to go back inside so I could find a nail before she would leave the house.

Earl was right about the sled. It went. With Jace steering and Brody behind him, it went so fast down that church hill that I yelled at them to drag their feet. Then I took a turn with Lily in my lap, and I screamed the whole way down, and she laughed so hard she got the hiccups.

That was Christmas morning.

The phone call

Cody always calls at noon on the holidays when he doesn’t have them. That’s in the agreement too. He’s never missed.

Brody got to the phone first. I was in the kitchen heating up soup. I heard the whole thing, because Brody only has one volume.

“Dad! Santa didn’t come but Mom built snowmen! Four snowmen! With our names! And then Earl built one too, an old man one with a pipe, and he gave us a sled, a real one, wood, and we went down the church hill like a hundred times, and Jace steered!”

Then there was a long pause on Brody’s end.

“Uh huh,” Brody said. “Uh huh. Yeah. She made us signs on Grandpa Walt’s saw. Mine’s got a tractor.”

Another pause.

“I don’t know,” Brody said. “Mom, Dad wants to know if he can come over.”

I took the phone. Cody’s voice was low and strange.

“Can I come by,” he said. “Just for a minute. Not to stay.”

“Two o’clock,” I said.