Strangely, this was never in style

One weekend we drove up to Norwood without checking the weather forecast. We drove up Friday night, went to bed, and woke up in the morning to see our breath misting in front of our faces, and there were several inches of snow on the ground.

My brother was about 2, which would've made me 14 and my sister 10. And we were desperate to get out into the snow, with nary a glove, a hat, or a snow boot among us.

I could wear Grandmom's boots, coat, and gloves, and I had a scarf wrapped around my head. I remember grousing about not being able to wear my own jacket, but in the end, snow won out over teenage fashion trauma. Lissa grumbled too, because everything she had on was too big: she had on like 3 pairs of socks inside Grandmom's rain boots, and she could hardly walk.

My brother had a coat but no shoes to wear. We stood around for a minute, pondering, while he bounced up and down at the window making one of those toddler sounds that's most audible to dogs. Finally, Grandmom decided that we would rubberband plastic bread bags around his legs.

He did not love this idea.

But when the violent operation was over, I carried him howling outside into the snow and plopped him down in it. In 3.9 seconds he had forgotten that he was wearing food packaging. We built a lopsided snowman. It even had a carrot nose.