Snow

Winter came to the Lowcountry and decided to stay for a few days.
To make sure we really understood she was serious, there was more than just a dusting of snow. Not serious snow, mind you. Not blinding blasts, making it impossible to see beyond your car’s headlights. This snow was more like someone shaking out a mop, except it was snow, not dust.
Then, the snow really began to get serious. Covered the driveway, rooftops, the yard. On the deck, the birdbath was full of snow. No worries, not a bird in sight.
Winter was really letting us know. Here I come, ready or not.
I was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia. We only do cold long enough to show off our winter wardrobe and vintage furs.

We only knew Hollywood’s version of snow in movies filmed on sound stages, where rumor had it one director used bleached cornflakes for snow.
By the time I married and went in 1954 to Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany as an Army wife, I was looking forward to seeing snow, real snow.

The first snow of the season was rather pathetic. Didn’t matter. I stood at the window and looked out, transfixed. Snow, real snow. There wasn’t half an inch on the ground that November day before my friend Carolyn Conselmann ran down from her apartment across the street, scooped up a handful of snow, and rushed upstairs to our front door and rang the bell.

I opened the door.

Gotcha, she yelled and smushed that snowball right in my face.

It was later that year, in February, and bitter cold, snow everywhere, when I took the train from Landstuhl for my Grandfather Stelljes’ funeral in Bremen. I had missed the service, but my Aunt Martha practically frog-marched me down the street to the cemetery.” It’s only a little way,” she said. Hah.

Snow on the ground, on the sidewalk. I had no boots. I soldiered on and by the time the gravestone was duly admired and respects paid, my feet in their Troyling high heels were beyond frozen.

I plopped down on a nearby marble bench. “I’m so cold,” I chattered. “Here, put your feet in my shoes.” And she sat down beside me, took off her shoes, and I took off mine and put my feet in her practical, super large, flat-heeled, ugly-to-the-bone shoes that felt like an oven turned up to 500 degrees.
Bliss.

The worst, absolutely worst snow was going to my Grandmother’s 90th birthday celebration in Bremen. We left Bad Kreuznach at five in the AM, the four children and I. We took the scenic route along the Rhine River to Cologne, pitch black dark, couldn’t see a thing except streetlights and snow, then north passing tractor trailers which had slid on the ice and rested all doubled out in fields adjoining the Autobahn.

No one was awake by the time we got to Bremen, so we drove the thirty miles on to Bremerhaven down a road with snow drifts higher than our car.

We couldn’t leave one set of grandparents without seeing the other, so after finally getting to Schwachhauserheerstrasse and wishing Omi Stelljes a happy 90th birthday, we headed south to my Mama’s family in Donsel, a group of five farmhouses out in the north German boonies. We spent most of the time in the kitchen, where the stove fueled with blocks of peat kept the room lovely warm.
The next day Uncle Heinrich took the girls for a sleigh ride through the woods and brought them back blue lipped and glassy eyed. It was cold, refrigerator freezer cold.

Past time to say, “Auf Wiedersehen, y’all.”

The children did learn to ski and had a blast going on trips with the AYA (Army Youth Association) to Austria, Switzerland, and down the road to Garmisch and Berchtesgaden.

These days, only daughter Tamela, queen of the bunny slopes and her husband Nick Maxim, a former Olympic contender, who challenges every double black diamond run he can find, head for the ski slopes at least once a year.

That’s nice.

Did I ever have a fun snow day?

I’m thinking. I’m thinking.

Um. Still thinking.

Annelore Harrell’s journey is a tapestry woven with fascinating experiences and extraordinary accomplishments. Even at 92, Annelore’s energy and zest for life continue to inspire.