Never Letting Go

Winter Wonderland....Sorta

Last night was the first night in over a month that I slept through without waking up screaming or crying, it felt fantastic!

I wake up to Kyle lightly brushing the hair from my face then tapping me on the forehead, I moan wanting to go back to sleep, “Darci, you have to see this.” I sit up and rub my eyes “It couldn’t wait?” I frown. Kyle takes me over to the window and we look out over our backyard.

Everything was covered in ice, at least a centimetre thick. The morning sun shines on to it, making it sparkle like powdered glitter had been sprinkled everywhere, “It’s beautiful.” I gasp, I move my hand to the door knob and try to push, the desire to go out to the ice was overwhelming.

Kyle takes my hand and leads me to the laundry door, “this is the only one that hasn’t been sealed by ice.” I take a step out onto the deck and instantly end up on my butt; I watch Blake and Lachie attempt to run up the ice slick that was once our driveway. I stand up and take a few wobbly steps in their direction before I end up on my butt again, after a while I can manage to walk. All four of us kids are trying to climb this ice slick and we are all failing, the driveway is just too steep.

We finally gave up and went inside to warm up. It’s never snowed anywhere near here and now here we were, surrounded by ice.

Lachie comes running up to me, “Its Monday!” it takes me awhile to realise what this means. No school.

Tess manages to get some food into us before we get our next adventurous idea. “We need rope, lots of rope.” I state, so we run into every shed we can access without going down any slopes that we couldn’t get back up.

We tie some of the rope together and throw it down the first big slope on the way to the river, “Don’t go in the water.” Tess warns, “Yes!” we call back in unison.

After lowering our selves down the first slope, we get ready to go down the steepest one. If we let go of the rope we could slide straight into the river and no one knows how think the ice is that covers the river.

I get lowered first since I’m the lightest then one by one the boys join me by the river. We gain more and more confidence as we creep towards the edge of the water, trying to find how frozen it is. We all stand by the water’s edge and then I get an idea.

I grab some rope and make a harness, I climb the tree and head toward the overhanging branch I was relaxing on yesterday afternoon. I tie some more rope around the tree and join it to my make shift harness, climbing down to carefully test the ice. Surprisingly it can take my whole weight, “Darci, you should probably get off there. Mum won’t be happy to find you have been in the river.” Blake says cautiously.

I take his advice and climb back on to the branch and head back towards the shore. Kyle helps me from the tree and we all sit by the edge of the river, staring at the beauty of this disaster.

“I don’t think I’ve told you this but I really like you being a part of our family.” Blake smiles shyly at me.

“Your family.” Lachie corrects him. Kyle takes my hand in his and smiles at me, “You basically were family when you became a friend, you just proved yourself to be worthy as sister now.” He playfully shoves me.

Blake stands up, “Right, I’m freezing and Darci probably is too so let’s go back up to the house.”

I nod in agreement, he was right, I was freezing! I stand up and follow the boys to the bottom of the first slope. I pull myself up the rope, the ice to smooth to climb up properly. I kept slipping leaving streaks of red rope burn on the palms of my hands.

I sit at the halfway point, waiting for the boys to join me. I press my hands against the ice at an attempt to cool the burning down; once Blake gets to the top we pull up the rope and untie it. I start on the next climb, carrying all of the rope to the top. I start to laugh, I feel like a mountaineer.

All the boys get to the top and we once again untie the ropes and carry them to the house. I dump the rope on the floor and fall onto the couch; Kyle comes over and practically sits on top of me.

“Oof! Can you get off me?” Kyle shuffles over so only his legs are on me, I’m too tired to make him move any further, I go to sleep to the sound of all of the boys breathing.