The Blue Light in the Snow Fort
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winter 1956

"But he wasn't the one inside it looking at the blue light."

So I was thinking about this all morning, what to even say. And then I looked out the window and it's snowing, just a little, not real snow. And it took me right back to the winter of 56. I would have been eight, eight years old. Tommy was 10. We had this blizzard, I mean a real nor'easter, the kind where you can't see the Henderson's house across the street, and that's maybe 40 feet away. School was canceled for three days, which, you know, when you're eight, that's basically a lifetime.

And my mother, she was not the kind of woman who liked having children inside. She bundled us up and sent us out. I had these red mittens that my grandmother had knitted me, the wool ones that got heavy when they got wet. And Tommy had this ridiculous hat with ear flaps that made him look like a beagle.

We built a snow fort in the backyard. And I don't mean, you know, a little pile. Tommy was very serious about it. He'd seen something in a book about igloos, and he decided we were building one. We spent, oh I think, two full days on it. My father came out on Saturday and helped us shore up the roof. He used a piece of plywood and then we packed snow on top so you couldn't see it. He worked at Raytheon, my father, did something with — I never really understood what he did, actually. Defense contracts, he couldn't talk about it. But a snow fort, that he could build. He got more into it than we did.

My mother took a photo of the three of us in front of it, but I don't know where that photo ended up. Probably in one of the boxes in the attic. Sarah keeps saying she'll go through those boxes with me, but you know, we never do.

Anyway, the thing I remember most is the light inside. Once we crawled in and sort of packed the entrance a little smaller, the snow walls had this blue glow like being inside a lantern. Tommy had stolen, well, borrowed, a candle from the dining room, and we lit it in there, which I'm sure was a terrible idea. But the light on the snow walls was, I still think about it, this blue and gold.

We stayed in that fort until my mother came out banging on a pot with a wooden spoon. That was her system. She never yelled for us. She just banged a pot. The whole neighborhood knew when the Sullivan kids were being called in. She made cocoa with too many marshmallows, always too many marshmallows. And I would burn my tongue every time because Tommy and I had this — wait, what was I going to say about — oh, the marshmallows, right. We had this race to see who could drink it before they melted. And I always lost. I was never patient. Harold was the patient one. He would, hmm, I'll talk about Harold another time.

But that kitchen, I can still feel the radiator against my back. We used to sit on the floor and lean against it after we came inside. Tommy lives in Vermont now. We talk every Sunday. He'll say I'm making this all up, that the fort was much smaller than I remember. But he wasn't the one inside it looking at the blue light. So, anyway.

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People: Tommy, Maggie's mother, Maggie's father, Maggie's grandmother, Sarah, Harold, Henderson