WALKING IN GRACE

Winter in the country will always be my favorite time of the year.  Daddy and I loved Winter. The snow was our playground.  My tears are as numerous as the snowflakes that I have seen in my lifetime,  when I remember my Daddy.  I can remember when the snow got so high that Daddy had to make a tunnel from our door out to the road.  I remember when Daddy would come walking up that snow-covered road.  His steps were so slow,  and steady.  I can see the snow on the railroad tracks and hanging off of the electric poles.  The trees would hang in a combination of snow and ice. What a beautiful sight.  My little country home was like a story right out of a scene from Norman Rockwell.  I can see Daddy dragging a Christmas tree from the woods behind our house.  I can recall something that my Daddy taught me about snow.  He taught me how to lay down in the floor,  where you can see the sky,  and stare up into the air.  As the snowflakes fall down,  you feel like you are floating in the air.  Daddy told me that's how it feels to fly like the angels.  He and I could watch it snow like this for hours.  But when you would stand up,  your body still felt like it was floating.  Snow Angels,  Oh how Daddy and I loved to make snow Angels  We would lay down on the ground and wave our hands up and down,  leaving behind an imprint that looked as if Angels had stopped by for a visit.  He would tell me that I was his little Angel,  and that God loved me.  He told me that when God let it snow,  that he was covering us in a blanket of LOVE.  He told me that the snow to him felt warm...not cold.  I don't know if I was just imaging things or not...BUT I never got cold in the snow when I was making snow Angels,  or playing  outside with my Daddy.  We lived where there was a big hill.  Daddy would take me up on the hill and all of us children would ride on sleighs down the hills for hours. I can remember the first Christmas that I  recieved that very special present from SANTA,  it was a red radio flyer sleigh.  That would become my most prized pesent ever and the sweetest memories I would ever come to have of my daddy.  I did not realize that Daddy was an old man ,to me he was just Daddy.  I know now that it was a labor of LOVE for him to pull me up the three hills from our house that lead to my schoolhouse.  He would pull me up the hills and then hop on and ride down the hills with me,  and he did this for many years.  Until I thought that I was too big to be" Daddy's Little girl,"  but little did I know at the tender age of Ten that I would have given anything to have been Daddy's little girl again.  God had called him home and I had lost my best friend and Winter would never be the same again.  I could only remember now all those times on the red radio flyer sleigh the times we were together,  and the trips we would make up on that steep hill behind our house with the neighbors ,with a big fire burning ,  and the sound of laughter of all the children at play,  on a cold winter evening.

No Winter would be complete without  Daddy, Mama, and me building a snowman.  That is about all Mama ever wanted to be in the snow to do.  But what memories I have of those times together.

It has been a long time since I have gotten to play in the snow with my Daddy.  As a matter of fact I cry now almost every Winter because I can not get home to my little playground dressed in white.  Because there I feel closer to my Daddy than anywhere else on earth.

I take a moment from time  to time to remember in fondness all of those memories I have of my Daddy and Me playing on God's Blanket of LOVE.