Not Everyone Can Be This Smooth

There was actual snow on the ground – again – last weekend, and the kids had been inside too long.  We were in the midst of one of those hair-pulling hours that can easily lead to bloodshed.  When Geoff’s face took on a desperate Let’s Get Out of Here look, I began shoving the boys into their snowpants.  They insisted, rather loudly, that they wanted to stay home but I convinced them with something soft and motherly along the lines of, “I don’t care if you want to go tobogganing or not.  You’re going and you’ll bloody well like it.”

Which is why we found ourselves, half an hour later, standing at the top of the best hill around, watching our older boy hurtle himself headfirst onto an air mattress, the snow beneath him turned to ice and mud from overuse.  I was about to take off for my third trip down when Geoff gave me some helpful advice.

“Keep your hands out to steer the sled!” he shouted.

Sadly, I listened to him.  When I reached the bottom of the hill and hit the enormous chunks of ice that lay there in a heap, my toboggan bounced wildly and slammed me back down directly on top of my right hand, bending the middle finger suddenly sideways with a sickening rapidity. Just to be clear, that would the middle finger of the right hand kept outside of the sled to help me steer.   Not one to be overly dramatic, however, I limited my rolls of agony to two or three graceless tumbles and kept my language surprisingly clean.  Then I pulled my mitten off to check for signs of a break.  I couldn’t find any, but my poor finger was stuck straight out, stiff and sprained, and very handy for showing Geoff what I thought when he added, helpfully, “You should have put your hands back inside when you hit the bottom!”

Anyway, that is the reason I ended up standing bravely at the bottom of the hill, cradling my hand in a mitt full of snow while the boys raced up and down with their sleds.

Then I met her: my new friend, Zoe.

She was standing nearby with her little boy all bundled up and tucked into one of those very cute baby-sized toboggans.  I made some kind of friendly comment about how sweet he looked and she made an equally friendly comment back and so we began to chat.  It turned out that her older son was the same age as mine so we quickly introduced them and they took off together like they had been friends from birth.  They then spent the next half hour devising more and more elaborate ways to throw themselves down the hill.  All the while, Zoe and I talked.  I quickly realized that a) I had a lot in common with her, b) she laughed easily, and c) she had pushed her eighteen-month-old child down the hill in that baby-sized toboggan and for that she had my utmost respect.

This girl was very cool.  She was fun.  She had boys the same age as mine and they got along really well.  She made me laugh and she seemed to get my sense of humour – such as it is – and that, in itself, is a rare and beautiful thing.  Also, her husband is named after van Gogh’s older brother and I found that out within 20 minutes of meeting her.  You see?  We connected.

Our time on the hill, however, was quickly coming to an end – the boys were getting cold and the pain in my finger was reaching tea-needing proportions – but I didn’t want to just, you know, say goodbye.  I really wanted to see this woman again; I just couldn’t seem to find an easy way to make the leap from pleasant hillside chat to actually hanging out with her.  I felt silly, like I needed a line.

“You seem really nice, and you sure have a great laugh, maybe we should lose the little ones and hit the nearest coffee shop?”

I don’t think so.

“If you want to crank this baby up a notch, I’ll buy the drinks.”

Totally inappropriate.

“My finger doesn’t always stick out this way.  Want to be my new friend?”

See?  I am ridiculous.  This was not middle school.  It was not even high school.  I am a grown woman with two kids.  Zoe seemed really nice and at least compassionate enough not to actually laugh at me out loud.  I should not have to let her – this potentially wonderful friend – disappear into the wilds of…well, of wherever she lived.

But that’s exactly what I was going to do until Zoe put a sudden end to my foolishness.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

I told her the school that was closest to us and the name of our street.

And she looked at me strangely, like I had something in my teeth that was making her grin.

“We just moved onto that street!” she said.

“NO WAY!” I shouted.  And then …. I hugged her.

I hugged her like a gigantic, overly friendly golden retriever with a drooling problem.

But Zoe was that woman, the one with the two boys who had moved onto our street months ago.  I had been meaning to stop by and welcome her for ages and now here she was!  So I hugged her.

The best part is that it didn’t freak her out.  Nope, she just hugged me back and said,

“Hey, do you want to bring the kids over tomorrow afternoon to play?”

Which was perhaps just a little bit better than anything I was going to say.

So that, my friends, is how you pick up a new girlfriend at the bottom of a tobogganing hill.  You just have to play the whole thing very, very cool.