It was one of those winters when snow seemed endless. Storm after storm had piled high along Jackie Lane, and the world outside felt hushed and white. School had been canceled again, which to us children meant freedom—long hours bundled in boots and scarves, dragging sleds up and down the neighborhood hills.
The biggest hill belonged to a family down the street. It was steep enough to make your heart race before you even pushed off, and that morning the neighborhood kids had turned it into a track of packed-down snow. Laughter echoed as sleds flew, collided, and tumbled into heaps at the bottom.
Carole, always bold and eager, decided to go down on her own. I stood at the top watching as she leaned forward, her small figure quickly swallowed by speed. The sled carried her faster and faster, until it drifted slightly off course. At the bottom stood a wooden fence post, half-buried in snow but hard as stone. The sound of the collision—sled meeting post, Carole’s cry—cut through the air.
We rushed to her side. She was crumpled in the snow, clutching her shoulder, her face pale beneath the red of cold cheeks. In that moment she seemed so little, so fragile. The fun of the day evaporated into a frantic blur as we found a way to get her to the hospital.
I remember the waiting room, the smell of antiseptic, the stillness of my mother sitting beside her. It struck me as unusual that my father wasn’t there—he was at work when it happened, and he met us later at the hospital. His arrival brought both relief and a sense of how serious it all was. The doctor explained her shoulder was broken, and for weeks afterward Carole wore a sling that looked oversized against her small frame.
When I think back on that winter, I don’t remember the snow as much as I remember that feeling—the way childhood suddenly shifted from carefree to fearful in a matter of seconds. It was the first time I saw how quickly things could change, how fragile we really were, even in the middle of all that laughter and snow.
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