Sledding

Kiera O'Brien |

12/22/2007 - 12/23/07

Third Place (tie), teen essays

What is Christmas all about? Sledding, and getting to be a kid again, Kiera O'Brien tells us. After sharing her snow-packed experience with her siblings and cousins and peering in at her family's Christmas dinner, we are inclined to agree!

Snowflakes coat my gloves, my hair, my scarf, everything. Stomping my frozen boots on the ground and ripping my gloves off with my teeth, I'm in the door before any more snowflakes can take refuge in my clothes. Inside, it's so warm that by the time I've pulled off my boots I'm no longer covered in snowflakes, but am now soaking wet. I pull off my tremendous winter coat, shaking droplets of water. I shiver even though it must be about a hundred degrees in here.

The smell of fresh-baked cookies fills my nose. I rush into the kitchen, searching out those delicious-smelling treats that my mom has probably been working on all day. I've come just in time to help decorate the cookies. Grabbing a tube of colorful, overly sweet icing, I start decorating a gingerbread tree.

Our Christmas tree is perched merrily in the corner, heavily decorated and tilting at an odd angle. Even if it is a little dysfunctional, it is still pretty in its own weird way. Under the tree are a few presents; most of them will be put there tonight, Christmas Eve.

As I'm decorating the last few cookies, my cousin blows in the door.

Picking up a cookie, she comments on how pretty they look and then takes a huge bite. Yummy, too, she tells me, smiling.

"Anyway," she says, "I was wondering if you guys wanted to go sledding before dinner tonight. It's not often we have snow on Christmas Eve."

Nodding, I tell her that I'd love to come and that I'm sure my mom would appreciate us getting out of her hair. She's got tons to do before tonight.

My cousins and I live down the same long, winding, dirt road in the Santa Fe mountains. When we get a good snow, the sledding is fantastic.

I convince my sister and brother to come along and we all shrug on our parkas and tug on our boots. Grabbing the sleds on the way out the door, we take turns pulling each other to the sledding hill.

"The sledding hill" is the steep, curving dirt road that leads to our house. It's the best sledding in the world and we all clamber onto our favorite sled, racing each other, daring everyone else to go down backward — you know, your basic shenanigans.

Pretty soon, my four older cousins visiting from college join us and we crowd onto the sleds, four at a time.

As usual, my little sister gets snow in her gloves (or something silly like that) and insists she's not well enough to walk up the hill. We all gather at the bottom of the hill and make snowmen and have a snowball fight. I end up buried in a snowbank. My oldest cousin's neck is so cold from the snow we've shoved down his shirt that it's gone numb.

We're all completely worn out, but decide to do three more sledding runs before heading back to our houses. The trudge back to the warm house and the hot chocolate is the worst, but it's worth it in the end. We drink hot chocolate until my mom kicks my cousins out, telling them to go get ready for dinner. It starts in an hour, she tells them. She send my brother and me out to light farolitos and plug in the Christmas lights.

Before we know it, guests are streaming in, wishing us Merry Christmas and asking all sorts of overly polite questions. It's all rather hectic, with people breaking wine glasses, trying to start up caroling, and just being loud. Dinner begins and we all tuck in, enjoying every bite.

But it's not the dinner or the presents that stick out in my mind. To me, the best part by far was being able to go sledding and be a little kid again. Isn't that what Christmas is about?