A Late Winter Joke

On the way to class this morning I was thinking about a trip I took in Banska Bystrica by bus about this time of year.  The sky was dull and so full of grayness that it drooped almost touching the piles of grit-covered snow and ice laying piled on corners and medians.

The kids and I needed to get out. With two small ones and no car, it would be a project requiring determination and planning. Long underwear and socks, t-shirts, long sleeved-shirts and sweatshirts, hoodies up, ski pants, coats, scarves and mittens.  All of this, after I dressed myself, because the little ones got too hot if they had to wait for me.

“I have to go potty.” 

Reverse the process and after another pit stop start again.  “I’m thirsty.” We will have hot chocolate at Prissy’s.

Four little legs covered in snow pants don’t move very quickly, but quicker than a stroller over the ice covered walks so we scooted, climbed and slid to the bus stop and waited.  Thankfully we got two seats. I plopped the two kids on first, and looked around. 

Sure enough, all eyes were on us.  I wanted to think it was because we were such a lovely family, but it was hard to tell if we were even human under all the layers.  I asked several different friends what it was that made us stand out and people notice us.  Everyone replied similarly, “You glow.” Figure it out, I had turned it over in my mind many times and still wasn’t sure.  I know at this time we might have been the only ones smiling. After all, the sun wasn’t out to cheer us up and it was four in the afternoon, almost dark.  The bus was filling with people coming home from work.  I was tired and I had learned not to smile too much in public, but I am sure my eyes were smiling.  I was going to see a friend. I was getting out of the house with my kids and we were on an adventure. 

Which is when it happened. I looked out the window, over the heads of my children.  Ryan was shorter than I thought; it was easy to look straight over him. In fact, he was shorter than his toddler sister.  I looked closer. He looked like just a head sitting on the seat.  Albeit a cute happy head. He always had a way of wearing his hat that made one smile, a trait he inherited from his grandma.  And he loves winter, but his face couldn’t even reach the window. I could see that Ryan found a seat that had outworn its life and yet, because it isn’t “broken’ wasn’t being replaced.  If it hadn’t been for all the thick layers, we might have lost him down the hole, but there was his cheery head smiling at me and I couldn’t help but give a big huge smile and think, “All part of the adventure.”