“Angels in the snow!”
Sigrid very carefully raised herself from where she had been lying flat on her back with arms outstretched on the pure white sheet of newly fallen snow, carefully, so as not to disturb the outline formed when she had lain sprawled full length, spreading her legs wide apart to make the impression of a long skirt and moving her arms up and down on the snow to mark the contour of wings.
She leaned over Elisabet and grabbed her hands and with a quick pulling movement raised her from the imprint she had made; went to Karl and Maria and Johann with the same nimble assistance, and picked baby Herman up under the arms and swung him high into the air and then held him, with his red-cheeked face close to hers, as they looked at the “angels in the snow.”
They restricted their footsteps so as to keep them all in the “floor” on which the angels ‘stood” – the mama and five little angels – steps in height, from Elisabet who was almost ten to Herman Nikodemus who was not quite one.
- From April Snow (a novel), by Lillian Budd – one of my favorite books
This is the kind of mother I strive to be – someone who takes time to play with her children, and become as one of them long enough to find delight.
Snow Angels! I’m just waiting for the snow!