“Ava, look!” My cousin said to me, pointing out the bay window to the thousands of snowflakes falling from the sky. I looked out and then looked at her with wide eyes. We made a plan to go outside when it was dark out like we’ve always wanted to. My cousin was over for Christmas break, and she had to go back home the following day. So this was our last chance if we wanted to do it when we were still both still under 10 years old. We sat around eagerly waiting -watching the snow thunder down, praying it would never stop- until the sun had finally left. We jumped into our snow pants and threw on as many jackets as we could find and headed out. Standing in snow that went up halfway to my knees, I looked up at the millions of snowflakes coming down around me. I felt free in the night even though snow surrounded me from head to toe. The sky was a comforting light gray, giving the illusion that it wasn’t as late as I thought. The snow that covered every surface looked like a clean sheet of marble had been draped over the entire town. I’ve always loved how untouched snow looked. So perfect and smooth like nothing could mess it up. Soft snowflakes stood in the headlights of the cars that drove past my house like white paint splattered on a black canvas.

“Ava, come here!” My cousin giggled to me as she hopped over to the side of her dad’s snow plow that was parked in my driveway. Sitting so still, surrounded by what it was made to clean up, like a lawn mower sitting in an overgrowth of grass. When my cousin reached the plow, she said in a cartoonish voice, “Follow me!...PLOW!” and threw herself down into the pillow of snow below her. I instantly knew what she was quoting; a christmas episode of Phineas and Ferb where a snowman gets hit by a plow. I looked at her and laughed at how dumb, yet funny it was. We laughed together in the silence of snow, our voices shattering the peace of the night like accidentally dropping your mother’s favorite plate at Christmas dinner. I then tried to run over to the plow, but my little legs and my oversized snow boots slowed me down from getting there as fast as I wanted to. But when I got there, I repeated the same thing that she did.

“PLOW!” then I collapsed into the snow that was quickly piling up. We laid in the snow laughing until tears came from our eyes. My tears felt like streams of ice dripping down my face, and my snowpants and layers of jackets helped me forget about the foot of snow encasing me. The tips of my gloves had already began to get soggy, and snow had jumped into my boots and made my socks wet too. Snow had started to become matted in my long hair because I refused to put it up in my hat like my mom suggested. But I didn’t care, because my cousin and I were having too good of a time to stop. We kept repeating this process -“PLOW!”, fall, laugh, and up again- until we were completely numb.

My mom had been watching us from the kitchen because she was afraid we were going to get frostbite. Since my mom is a nurse, and she cares about us deeply, she’s always been very overprotective about almost everything. So when we got inside she rushed over to make sure we were okay and to help us warm up. She kept saying things like; “Aren’t you guys cold? Do you want warm clothes to change into? Do you want hot chocolate? You should really sit by the fire, you’re going to get frostbite.” We only listened to one of the things she said, which was to make hot chocolate. We sat on the cool bay window and rested our heads against the glass. Cold air seeped through, which fogged the glass around where my head rested. The warm yellow lights hung above us as we grasped onto our hot cups which warmed our frozen bodies. The snow in my hair had started to melt, and left cold puddles on the back of my fresh pajamas. I looked out at the mess of the snow we made. A big hole in the snow from where we were falling and laughing at ourselves; like a comet had crashed down in my driveway. I looked up at my cousin and said “PLOW!” and we laughed just like we had outside. My mom, who was in the kitchen with us, looked at us, smiled, and said, “You two are so weird.” But we didn’t mind because we knew what it meant and that’s all that mattered. We kept on laughing all the same.