First Contact

Is there a God? Can you talk to him? Does he answer? As a fifth grader I wasn’t sure.  This is the story of my first earnest attempt to find out—on a Christmas Eve without snow.

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Upstate New York is known for its heavy snowpack, but on the day before Christmas my front lawn is brown and bare. Sorry, Christmas without snow is like Niagara Falls without water. Plus, I asked Santa for my first pair of skis.   

With much regret, I know it’s really my parents who put the orange in the toe of my stocking. My parents are the ones who enjoy the milk and cookies my younger brother and I set on the coffee table. My frugal mom probably puts the carrots for the reindeer back in the fridge. I know skis are a huge present, and parents can say no to any item on my list, but if God is real, only he can bring snow.    

So, before bed, alone in the dark hall, I open the front door and step into the slim space between the solid white door behind me and the storm door, rattling with the wind. Selfish, desperate, as only a child can be, my breath fogging the frigid panes, I appeal—for the very first time—not to the rote God of Now I Lay me Down to Sleep, or God is great and God is good and we thank him for our food, but to the highest authority, far above the black winter sky, who I hope can hear my wish for the world to be made right by morning with a thick blanket of powder.   

I’ve wanted skis since first grade when Polly Handel invited me to Hickory Hill with her family. I’ve been invited again and again by my best friend, Marie, to Stratton, Bromley, Gore, even Mt. Snow which she says has a heated pool. But my parents are from the South. They don’t know about renting skis, about lessons, about anything, so I can never go. I’ve taken the bus downtown with Marie and wandered through Goldstocks and Fox and Murphy’s sporting goods stores, pushing through aisles of puffy parkas, goggles, and tassel caps. I’ve ogled row upon row of the latest metal skis like Heads and Harts, but I would take anything that can schuss down a hill.    

Not an avid reader, I even checked a book out of the school library. It was fully illustrated with black and white pictures of kids demonstrating snowplows and stem christies. But neither the arrows on the page nor the captions below were enough. My dream is to wedel through a cloud of untouched powder like Marie’s dad in the 8mm home movie of their family on Mount Fuji in far-away Japan when he was in the Air Force. What more can I do than leave my milk and cookies, as usual, and wait for a miracle?

Before daylight I awake and ease into my blue dust-bunny slippers. I throw on my quilted robe printed with forget-me-nots and sneak down the stairs. Around the corner, I flip on the soft light of the Christmas tree, and take in the sight of black wooden skis propped against the mantle. Beside the fireplace tongs, stand two aluminum poles with black rubber handles. Set on the hearth, below my green felt stocking, is a box wrapped in red Santa Claus paper.    

I kneel before the skis and open the box. Just as I’d hoped, black leather boots with red laces. I pull out the contents of my stocking: rag wool socks, black leather mittens, candy canes, a Rudolph- the- Red- Nosed- Reindeer Pez dispenser, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and my orange. I pull on the socks, lace up the boots, set the skis on the floor, and place my right toe under the front of the binding. I pull the springy cable around the back of my boot and duplicate on the left. I slide my hands into the mittens, wrap the ski pole strap around my wrist, like I saw in the book, and ski across the carpet towards the Christmas tree.   

That’s when I see it. Out the picture window. The snow. Flakes falling almost imperceptibly against a leaden sky. Wall to wall white covering the whole woodsy backyard. Enough to take my skis to the municipal golf course and try them out.    

My parents find me and my brother peeling our oranges, amidst my brother’s stocking loot: a Frosty-the-Snowman Pez dispenser, candy canes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and several boxes of BB’s for the BB gun I hardly noticed propped on the other side of the hearth.    

After breakfast, after picking up my Grandmother, after opening the rest of my presents: a blue and white ski sweater, and stretchy black ski pants, I am chomping at the bit to call my friend, Helen, across the street to see if she will teach me how to ski.   

It’s two o’clock by the time she can come over and show me and my dad how to sling my skis over my left shoulder while carrying my poles with my right hand. The neighborhood has been plowed, so while my brother and dad pop BB’s into a target nailed to the tree where squirrels raid the bird feeder, I follow Helen two blocks up to Delarosa Road in my stiff ski boots. Then one more block to the right before we can cross busy Balltown Road to the virgin hills of the golf course.    

Cautiously, I push off the first precipice and try to snowplow like Helen at the bottom.  Of course, I fall, but it’s easy to climb back up the hill using the herring bone step she shows me. With increasing confidence, I try planting my pole for a stem christie, shift my weight, like Helen, and discover I’m turning. Up and down, up and down, I’m figuring it out until Helen checks the new Timex she got for Christmas and announces it’s almost four, the time she’s got to go home. But I’m not ready to leave.   

Alone, in the flat light, I glide further and further into the course until mine are the only tracks on acres of pristine snow—as if it’s all for me.   

Flakes are still coming down when I tumble through a spray of powder and land unscathed on a crystalline pillow. Spread eagled under the vast white sky, my mouth open, as if to speak, I let the glittering shards melt on my tongue.    

In the distance, through the hemlocks on the edge of the road, I see a string of tiny headlights. It’s time to go. But how can I leave this magic?

Did the supreme being of the universe, who alone can sprinkle the earth with this glory, really hear my prayer? At age ten, I can’t express any of this.

I simply unfasten the safety straps to my tangled skis and sweep my unfettered arms and legs in the shape of an angel.   

Thanks to Thomas Galler for the beautiful photo of a winter morning on Unsplash.