Before I can go on to more profound topics, I have to share news about this amazing igloo we produced a couple of weeks ago. We had a late-winter storm on the last Saturday of the Baha’i fast. Somehow we found the energy to do this. To build the bricks we used a large oval-shaped galvanized metal washtub we had lying about in the yard, something I’ve used for gardening from time to time. It was perfect for lightly packing the very wet snow into satisfyingly big bricks which could be laid in a circular form on the ground and gradually built up.
This became more the adults’ project than the kids’, but they were initially excited enough that their enthusiasm helped carry us through to the end. The entire time we were building the igloo, the kids were pretending they live in the Artic—as they have been doing for weeks, since it has seemed as though spring would never come, and thus, it really never will because we live at the North Pole.
Just before we put on the final touches, completing the roof, we served lunch to the children inside the igloo. They enjoyed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Smartfood popcorn, and hot chocolate. I think they decided that life in the Arctic, polar bears and arctic foxes and all, is really pretty good if you can cuddle up inside a cozy snow structure and enjoy a good meal.
As the kids ate and we adults could only watch, stomachs grumbling and sweat drying on my husband’s face, it occurred to us that this was the first time in our lives that we had seen an igloo to completion. I remember many times in my childhood starting out to make an igloo and never quite getting there. It was somehow a fulfillment of youthful dreams and fantasy to make this one happen.
