by Evelyn Chagarov

Created on: July 18, 2009   Last Updated: July 19, 2009

The cold wind bit into my young, round cheeks. My childish laughter echoed back to me from the snowy hills, and the icy branches waved at me happily. It was winter in Michigan, and I came from a very poor family; sled and snowmobiles were out of the question for us. My father and I had taken our time getting ready for this snow day. We carefully put on as many layers of clothing as we could because we did not have snowsuits. My father gave me his mittens to wear, the ones he had rescued from the garbage can at work. The mittens were old and frayed in places, and the white insulation was starting to escape. For his mittens, my father slipped his work worn hands into old socks. It took me a long time to understand the look on his face that day. Written in his eyes was a sorrow and misery of the type that many people will never know. My father bore the burden of not being able to provide for his only child. People often ask me how I can say that my childhood was a happy one, and I always respond that I had everything I needed. I had a father who loved me, who always told me that he worked [himself] to the bone to make sure that I had food to eat, clothes to wear and a place to sleep. And for a few months out of the year, I had the snow.

One particular day, my father acquired the lid of a plastic garbage can and brought it home to our trailer for some winter fun. The walls of our home were starting to warp, the floor was not quite level, and the cold always seemed to sneak in no matter how well my father prepared our home for winter, but it was home. My father smiled as he came through the door, an impish grin that I did not see on his face very often. When my father got home from his factory job, he was usually too tired to do much more than fix me dinner and take a bath. Even then, he would frequently fall asleep in the bath and wake up the next morning to get me ready for school and repeat his day. I knew that my father had something special planned that day.

We trudged through the thick blanket of fluffy snow, our laughter ringing out. My father quizzed me on the meanings of words that, as a third-grader, should have been well beyond my vocabulary. He would ask me questions such as, What does 'accumulate' mean? My answer would usually be correct. That was not enough for my father, though he wanted me to go to college and escape the choke-hold grip of poverty. He would ask me to spell the word I had just defined, and I would cheerfully oblige, as I was eager

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