Let It Snow

The first snowfall of the year came at the beginning of December, on a Saturday.

That morning, Dirk and I went into the kitchen where Mum and Dad were already sitting at the breakfast table. Dad didn’t have to work on Saturdays because the bank where he wasin charge of1 a department was closed. Mum worked as a secretary in Braun’s large factory, but only part-time. She was always telling people that she needed the rest of the timeto clean up the mess2 we and Dad made in the flat.

So Mum was sitting with Dad at the breakfast table with both her hands placed comfortably on hersticky-out belly3 where the baby was. Look out of the window, she said, the outdoors has put on its white coat.

Dirk and I went over to the window and looked out. Dirk said he couldn’t see a coat, but there was snow everywhere and wasn’t that fantastic because now we could go sledging and build snowmen.

Tons of snowflakes were falling from the sky, millions and millions of them. I picked out one that was still a long way up and watched it until it lay on the ground with the others.

We were still living in the house on the edge of town then. Dad’s aunt, the one weinherited4 the housein town from, hadn’t died yet. Björn wasn’t born either, he didn’t arrive until the next April. I didn’t have myguinea pig5 Fran yet either, and I only met Behruz, the fat Persian who would become my friend, much later.

But Richard was already my best friend. We were true blood brothers.

I was seven years old and Dirk was six.

Anyway, because of all the fresh snow that day, Dirk and I wanted to go sledging after breakfast.

Dad brought our sledge down from the attic. He told usnot to go mad6 and break the thing, the way we did last year when Dirk had crashed into a tree and broken his arm.

Dirk was always muchbraver7 than I was, but then again I’d never broken anything. Apart from one summer when I had sort of ridden into a street lamp on my bike. I’d knocked out two teeth and swallowed them. But it wasn’t all that badcos8 they were only milk teeth.

While Dad was fetching the sledge, Mum wrapped us up in warm clothes. We had to wear gloves and our bobble hats. Finally, Mum wrapped the big thick scarves that Granny had knitted for us around our necks.

Granny was Mum’s mum. There was usually trouble when she came to visit because Dadcouldn’t stand her9. Granny always told us that Dad had been a realyob10 in his youth. He used to drive around on his motorbike scaring all the old people and she would never understand why Mum had married such an idiotic show-off.

Granny liked to tell stories of the old days. Her favourite stories were all about how she had run through the bombed-out ruins of the town after the war carrying Aunt Gertrud on her back. I always felt sorry for her when she told us that, cos Aunt Gertrud was really really fat.

Dad’s mum had died before Dirk and I were born and we didn’t have any grandads either.

So Mum wrapped the scarves around our necks and told us to be very careful and not to go breaking any bones or teeth again. And then we were finally allowed to go.

Only fifteen minutes away from our house there was a big field with a really longslope11 that led all the way down to the stream. That’s where Dirk and I were going.

The snow was piled up quite high and when we got to the field it was still snowing. It was very cold and quiet everywhere. The only sound came from the snowflakes falling quietly on to the