Adult Fiction
“Mommy, snowing!” Mordy shouted.
His twin, Mendy, climbed up on the back of the couch. “Snow!”
Rachel looked up from where she was feeding baby Huvie to see the fat white flakes falling from the sky. She realized that this was probably the first time the twins remembered snow. Last year they were still pretty young and hadn’t gone out in the snow for long.
“Do you want to go out to play in the snow?” she asked.
“Yeah!”
“Yeth!”
A secret smile tickled the corners of her lips. Snow days were one of her favorite memories as a kid. She remembered playing in the snow with her siblings followed by tomato soup and grilled cheese at the scarred wooden table. Then in the afternoon, Rachel would either read a book at the window as the snow fell, or bake cookies with her family, or do arts and crafts…
She wanted to give her boys the same experience.
“All right then! Let’s get on our winter clothes, and we can go outside.” Rachel placed Huvie in the bassinet and led the way to the boys’ room, where their heavy winter gear was stored.
It took some searching, but she finally found the heavy winter pants, waterproof gloves, and snow boots she’d ordered at the end of the season last year. She also found an old snowsuit that would be perfect for Huvie. Turning around, she found her twins bouncing up and down.
“Are you ready to get dressed?” she asked with a smile.
Mordy and Mendy shouted with joy.
***
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as smoothly as Rachel had planned.
“Don’t want pants! No like pants!” Mordy wailed.
“No hat! No!” Mendy ripped the blue pom pom hat from his head and threw it to the floor.
Rachel sat back on her heels with a sigh. “We can’t go out if you don’t wear your winter gear. You’ll get too cold!”
“No like pants!” Mordy stomped his foot, tears streaming down his face. “No want pants!”
“Look, they’ll keep your pants dry,” Rachel said, holding out the pants. “Your pants won’t get wet.”
After many tears and endless patience from Rachel (in her opinion), she had all three of her children ready to go out in the snow. Their building had a courtyard for the kids to play in, and so far, it looked like no one was there. She shepherded the boys down the stairs, Huvie secure in her arms. Each of the boys clutched a bucket and shovel in their hands, ready to play in the snow.
Rachel struggled to open the heavy metal door while holding Huvie in one arm. When she got it open, she gently pushed the boys out onto the top step. Suddenly, Mordy let out a wail.
“My shoe! Is wet!” he shouted. “No snow!”
“Your shoe is wet, and you don’t want to go outside?” Rachel clarified.
Mordy sniffled and nodded, then held up one foot. His little blue snow boot was dusted with snow up until the ankle. “No like snow.”
“Snow is wet, Mordy. That’s just how snow works.” Rachel turned to her other son, who was contemplating the snow with an adorably serious expression on his face. “Do you want to play in the snow, Mendy?”
Mendy nodded eagerly and leapt out the door. Rachel opened her mouth to call for him to stop, but it was too late. He tumbled down the snow-covered steps and landed on his bottom in a pile of snow with a quiet puff.
Rachel prepared herself for the inevitable tears. Sure enough, Mendy’s voice joined Mordy’s wails as both boys cried over what was supposed to be an enjoyable activity. Rachel’s heart sank. She’d really wanted to share this experience with her boys, but maybe they were too young. Next year would probably be better.
“Okay, let’s go inside. Mendy, can you get back up the stairs by yourself?”
Mendy nodded and sniffled before slowly making his way up the snowy steps. Rachel helped him inside as best she could with Rikki in her arms.
The small family headed upstairs to their apartment, both boys sniffling miserably. When they got inside, Mendy and Mordy stripped off their winter gear and ran off to play with their toys. Rachel took her time removing the snowsuit from Huvie, then took her own coat off. She stifled the disappointment threatening to overtake her. The boys were just too young, that was all. But she could still do the other things she used to do on snow days. They’d love that.
With that thought in mind, Rachel put Huvie down for a nap and headed for the kitchen to make tomato soup. The pot simmered on the stove as she put together a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches. She sniffed appreciatively at the aromas filling her small kitchen and went down the hall to get the boys.
“Mendy, Mordy, I have lunch!” she called into the boys’ room.
Two matching blond heads popped up. “Lunsh?” Mordy said.
“I like lunsh!” Mendy added.
The boys raced down the hall in front of Rachel, heading straight for the kitchen. Rachel smiled to herself and followed behind.
She handed each of the boys a bowl of soup she’d prepared for them in advance. The liquid was cool enough for the boys to each now, so she also gave them their toddler spoons. Mordy and Mendy dug in, but as soon as the first spoonful of soup hit their lips, the protests started.
“Dis icky!” Mordy pushed away his bowl, the red soup sloshing dangerously close to the top.
Mendy tossed his spoon across the table. “Don’t like dis!”
Rachel pressed her fingers to her temples. She should’ve known soup would be a long shot. The boys really didn’t like soup, and while she and her husband didn’t usually allow the boys to switch out part of their meal for something else, they did try to avoid things they knew the boys would absolutely not eat. She decided to skip the soup and go straight for the grilled cheese sandwich instead.
“Okay. Do you want sandwiches instead?” She placed a plate in front of each twin and set a half a sandwich on it. “It has ketchup and cheese on it.”
Mordy dug into his sandwich with a smile, but Mendy…Mendy had other ideas. He ripped it open and started smearing ketchup all over his plate. Rachel held back her initial instinct to reprimand him. As long as he ate it and didn’t make a mess, she didn’t want to disrupt him.
Until he crossed that boundary.
“Mendy! We do not smear ketchup on the table!” Rachel took away the plate and looked Mendy in the eye. “Food is for eating, not playing.”
“No like sammich!” was his reponse.
“You do like this sandwich,” Rachel said. She took a new, whole sandwich from the stack and placed it on his plate. “You need to eat lunch. No snack until you finish lunch.”
“No!” Mendy shouted.
Rachel glanced over at Mordy, who had stopped eating his sandwich. She bit her lip as he slowly lowered the remains of his sandwich to the plate and looked at Mendy, then her.
“No like sammich,” he said solemnly.
“You were just eating the sandwich.” Rachel pointed to the half-eaten – no, three-quarter-eaten – sandwich on his plate. “If you finish, we can have a snack.”
Mordy pushed the plate away. “No like sammich!”
Rachel groaned as both boys devolved into a tantrum. This she wouldn’t budge on. The boys had to eat lunch, and she had given them grilled cheese.
The idyllic snow day she wanted to give her children was just getting worse and worse.
***
Finally, an hour later, both boys had finished their sandwiches and were happily munching on some corn pops. Rachel hated bribing them to eat, but with her husband Yossi in yeshiva and her left with three children under three, she needed some way to get food in them.
Mendy and Mordy played with toys for a while, giving Rachel a much-needed break to read her book. But after half an hour the boys were back.
“Mommy, what you doing?” Mendy asked.
Mordy stood on tiptoes and leaned against the arm of the couch. “What dat?”
Rachel slid the bookmark into her book and set it aside. “It’s Mommy’s book. What happened to your toys?”
Mendy shrugged. “Don’t wanna.”
“Don’t like cars.” Mordy held up a little red car as proof.
“Hmm…” Rachel wracked her brain for something to entertain the boys with. Then she remembered what she used to do as a little girl. “Do you want to bake cookies?”
“Yeah!”
“Yay!”
The boys ran to the kitchen to bake cookies. Rachel followed behind, hoping that this, at least, wouldn’t end in a disaster.
She lifted her mixer onto the counter and began taking out ingredients. The boys jumped around her, eager to begin making cookies.
“Do you want to make shape cookies or chocolate chip cookies?” Seeing the confusion on the twins’ faces, she amended her question. “Cookie cutter cookies or chocolate chip cookies?”
“Cutter cookies!” Mordy jumped up and down, clutching his yarmulke in his hand.
“No! Choc’late ship!” Mendy disagreed.
Rachel twisted the tail of her tichel around her fingers. “Hmm…Mendy, what if we make cookie cutter cookies and decorate with chocolate chips? How does that sound?”
Mendy’s forehead wrinkled as he thought through the option. “’Kay.”
“Great! Mommy will measure out the ingredients, and you can take turns pouring them in.”
To Rachel’s surprise, everything went smoothly. Well, mostly smoothly. Mordy didn’t quite get the flour into the bowl, and the counter was covered in white powder. Rachel surreptitiously poured a little more flour into the mixer, hoping it would be enough to make up for what spilled. Next, Mendy accidentally elbowed an egg off the counter and burst into tears when it cracked on the floor. He wailed about the “chickie” inside, and Rachel remembered that his class had started learning about eggs and chicks in preparation for spring.
Finally, the dough was done, and Rachel separated it into three parts. Each boy got a sizable chunk, but not so much that it would take them forever to shape the cookies. She kept about half the dough for herself to make linzer cookies, which were her favorite, and plain sugar cookies, which were Yossi’s favorite.
Rachel took out her large collection of cookie cutters and placed them on the table. She couldn’t resist buying unique cookie cutters when they went on vacation or she saw them on sale, and her collection had grown to well over fifty cookie cutters. But she’d forgotten a very important point of having toddlers:
Everything had to be the same.
Mordy and Mendy nearly came to blows when they found a jet plane cookie cutter. Mendy liked planes, but Mordy had found the cookie cutter. Rachel found herself breaking up multiple fights over cookie cutters, and she started questioning her sanity. Why had she thought this would be a fun activity for the kids again? Oh, right, because she’d done it when she was little. But she didn’t remember it being so fraught with arguments!
But as she took away yet another cookie cutter the boys were fighting over, a fuzzy memory appeared in the front of her mind. She remembered fighting with her older sister over a bow cookie cutter, insistent that her cookies would be ruined if she didn’t get to use the cookie cutter right that minute. Her mother had taken away the cookie cutter just like she’d just done with the twins.
Apparently, some things never changed.
By the time the cookies were in the oven, Rachel just wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep. But Huvie was crying, and Rachel needed to feed her. Off to the bedroom she went to get Huvie.
Rachel settled on the couch as the twins played with their magnatiles. Huvie eagerly sucked on the bottle Rachel held to her mouth, and Rachel reflected that at least one of her children had had a good day today.
The sound of a key in the lock made her look up. Yossi entered the house, snow dusting his shoulders and hat. His Kollel had still requested that the men attend today, since the snow wasn’t quite as bad as the weatherman had predicted. Yossi had felt it was his responsibility to go, especially since they lived only a couple of blocks away.
“Hi, Yossi,” she called. “We’re in the living room.”
Her husband entered the room and was greeted by the twins grabbing onto his legs. “Hi, Rachel. Hi, boys. How was your day today?”
“Fun!” Mordy said.
Mendy grinned up at Yossi. “We play in snow.”
Rachel’s jaw dropped as the twins described their exciting day to their father. They sounded like they’d had a ton of fun, despite what she thought had been an unmitigated disaster.
“We make cookies,” Mendy told Yossi.
“I made plane.” Mordy took Yossi’s hand and led him to the oven. “See?”
“I see.” Yossi looked over at Rachel. “I guess today was fun?”
“Yeah,” Rachel replied. “I guess it was.”