Upstate Winter

The children’s game was actually “Red Light/Green Light,” not “Simon Says.”

Upstate Winter

November 22, 2006

Weather’s very “crisp” up here today. I walked to the mailbox while my coffee was brewing. The mail was cold in my bare hand, especially the stuff printed on slick paper. I walked fast both directions, emitting bright white flashes from my mouth, like a cigarette lighter out of  fuel. The yard and the woods were quiet, with the leaves on the ground all flat and and matted together, their little season of high-diving and splashing  over with, that Coney Island Memorial Day for leaves. 

Leaves are the tongue, or voice box, or loudspeakers of the trees—pick the metaphor you like best.

The trees look suddenly paralyzed when their leaves are off, because you can see their many limbs frozen in mid-gesture. But I think it’s more than illusion. I think they really do move less in winter, with no leaves to catch the wind. Winter in our country hills—I’m taking you back to Warren County, now—always struck me as a long instant. Time gone into lockdown, suspended animation, like—what was the name of that game kids played in our day [Red Light, Green Light]? Everyone tries to creep up to or run up to a line held by one person with his back turned. When the person in charge of the line turns suddenly around, he expects to see you all frozen in place, because you weren’t supposed to be moving; but you’re frozen with your arms and legs stretched in wild gestures, because you were. That person glares at you with a cruel smile, waiting to see who might wobble or fall. Because if the leader sees you moving, you’re out of the game. Ordered off the field of play. 

Was that “Simon Says?” Yes, that was the name of it [no, it was Red Light, Green Light]. “Simon says go! Simon says stop!” [Actually, the person who is “it” would shout either “Red light!” or “Green light!”]. In winter it seemed like every tree and building in the valley and up the valley walls was standing dead still under the eye of some commander we couldn’t see or hear, because the game was for everything but people. Nothing moving so much as to breathe—nothing animated but us humans, our dog, our chimney smoke. Winter was a stern time. Eventually spring would come and say go again, but you had a long wait until then. 

It was eerie and impressive the way everything outside stood dead still all those cold months. Not moving so much as to shiver. Sometimes us kids would be especially aware of the petrified state nature went into for the winter and would talk in respectful whispers. We would even walk in whispers. Or maybe it was just that we knew our sound would carry from our yard to our neighbor’s. But there was a feeling of sympathy for the motionless trees and buildings, the dried out creeks, the breakable grass and garden hoses, even the hardened dirt and the driveway gravel that didn’t roll when you walked on it, but stayed rigidly in place.

Guess I’m thinking about cold weather coming.—Email to Rob McCaskill