Swings:  although they’ve changed throughout the years I still believe they hold the same universal appeal.  My maternal grandmother loved to swing, as did my mother.  When they both were children they used to swing for hours, according to what they told me when I was little.  I think the most terrible thing I ever did was refuse to come off the swings once during second recess in first grade.  I can remember the hard wooden swings that were sort of precarious when I was really little.  Then I remember they switched to a sort of plastic sunken-seated swing.  I also recall the high metal poles got lower and lower, and regular dirt became sprinkled with woodchips, presumably in the interest of safety.  The thrill still remained of pumping one’s legs up, up, up; ready to chase the clouds.  My hands were sweaty and smelled of metal as the chains I gripped jangled.  Swings were an escape for me and also a chance to commune with nature.  Regardless of the season, I could fly.  I have very fond memories of my folks taking me to White Rock Lake on Sundays after church.  Daddy would nap on one of his grandmother’s handsewn quilts while Mama sat with him and kept an eye on me as I was swinging.  My little one recently told me she was on the swings for both recesses.  I told her that was not fair because someone else might like a turn.  With no small amount of chagrin I can remember hogging the swings myself.  Tire swings were always something I always found idyllic … particularly over a creek or river.  Growing up in an apartment we never had our own trees and our complex had no swings.  For Christmas this year I bought our little girl a tire swing, knowing how much she’d wanted a swing of her own.  Tire swings in our neighborhood seem to be both nostalgic as well as greeted with approval.  Before I picked my little one up from school this man walking his dogs caught me shrieking with glee as I spun about in her swing.  I stopped, embarrassed, and said it was really my nine year old’s but that I had never had one as a kid.  His reply was to stop and smile broadly; replying he had fond memories of his tire swing growing up and he encouraged me to make some of my own.  I am 50 years old and yet swinging on our tire swing makes me feel like I am ten again; that anything is possible and the world is mine.  The American founder of the tech organization “Girls Who Code,” Reshma Saujani said:

Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure.  We’re taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A’s.  Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey bars, and then just jump off headfirst.

I want so much for my little girl.  While I do want her to get all A’s, I also want her to soar.  That is something for which I wish us all to aspire, without ever becoming tired.

Here in the U.S., Northerners love to poke fun at Southerners who essentially shut down their cities when it snows.  I realize it must seem funny, but folks in the lowest half of the contiguous 48 are not very used to driving on roads with sheets of ice.  Usually, if we’re lucky, we get snow maybe once a year in Dallas … but it almost never sticks.  So this past entire week when everything was covered (for us) in a sizably thick blanket of pure white powder several inches deep it was a really big deal!  It felt like a combination of Colorado and Minnesota for me:  Colorado with the glistening, soft powder which sinks past your ankles and Minnesota with negative degree temperatures that just pierce your bones.  Everyone hunkered down, after having once again inexplicably bought out all the eggs, bread, and milk.  As the power grid was already taxed and Texas was nowhere near prepared, “rolling brown outs” were put into place.  From what I read on social media, neighbors were gracious and tried to conserve for others, just as we did.  Pipes dripped as many were plunged into frigid darkness.  Traditionally, our house is ALWAYS the one to have no power … even when others on our own block are OK.  Like a general I drilled my little family about the importance of keeping our electronic devices fully charged in the event of a power outage.  By some miracle, this is the ONE INSTANCE in which we were blessed to have retained our power during the entire time.  Each day we marveled at the additionally new-fallen snow, and how bright and quiet it seemed to be.  One of our wolfies skidded over our koi pond and slid with her young legs out like the scene from Bambi.  The waterfall was still running underneath layers of ice but it was completely frozen over.  Since we are not a big ski family, I realized we had no proper gear for even going outside.  Mittens and gloves became sodden fast.  The last time I sent our little one out she was wearing socks on her hands.  I have a few vague memories of my folks doing the same to me and then putting my hands in plastic bags and wrapping them together by putting electrical tape around my wrists.  In this picture you can see my little one is rocking a hooded puffer coat.  Oh how I hated coats with hoods!  I was forever removing them and I’d wind up with ear infections.  Thankfully my little one harbors no such qualms.  The late English poet, philosopher, and theologian, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, once said:  “Advice is like snow — the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”  I would say that is very much reminiscent of how this past week’s snow was:  it fell softly, dwelt a long time (for Texans), and sank deep into our minds.  A bit like my favorite childhood show “Little House on the Prairie” we were well and truly “snowed in.”  Not only did it reach -10° in some of my friends’ homes, they had to melt snow to boil water, read by candlelight, and use clay pots for heaters.  I believe man-made climate change will impact us all more and more in the future with regard to weather.  My precious family and I were SO lucky THIS time!  However, like the giant piles of snow I gawked at here in parking lots the first time I can ever recall, for next winter my husband and I are thinking of perhaps investing in a serious home generator,  as we were banked.