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down."

The kids set to the task, tamping, and pounding, and chinking. That's when I heard the sound of a woman's voice off to my right; it was a young woman, one of the folks who had watched us hoist the lintel into place. She stood in close proximity to us; I noticed the volume of her voice had been raised high enough for me to overhear her words.

"See what I mean?" she said to her companions. "As a teacher, we tell the kids not to do that."

Do that? Do what? And then it dawned upon me she was talking about our snow wall, and our doorway.

"So dangerous," she said, a tad louder, determined to share her feelings with me. She clucked her disapproval and moved off.

I pushed my hoodie off my head; my hair was damp with sweat. I watched the young woman walk away, and I shook my head.

"But, honey," I thought. "You don't understand. I am a child of the 50s. I grew up in a world without video games, DVDs, and Mario Brothers. I grew up in a world where we played with snow.

"I can build a snow fort with walls as strong as an elephant's back. As kids, we didn't want our toys collapsing onto our heads, so we learned to build our doorways strong. You don't have to worry."

I turned back to our snow wall; it was time to put the doorway to the test. I told the kids to move back. "Now before you go through the doorway," I advised, "you have to put weight on top to make sure the walls are strong." I bore down on the lintel with all my weight; the doorway held fast, just as I knew it would. The weight of the snow and the warmth of the sun had worked together to compact our snow wall, fusing it into a strong and unyielding structure. Exactly the way snow behaved, when I was a kid, over 45 years ago.

"Okay, you can go through now," I said. The former snow slug looked at me, a little suspiciously. "Really, you can," I insisted. "In fact, you can get on top, if you want to." My grandson took me up on the offer, and climbed atop the doorway; it held fast, just as I knew it would.

As the kids slipped back and forth through their hard-earned archway, I took a moment to ponder the different generations.

If the world hiccuped tomorrow, and the power grid went out, I could survive. And now, because of a few hours in the snow, my grandchildren have an edge on their Nintendo-addicted buddies. I wasn't so sure about the young woman who had decried my actions, however. Maybe she was one of the unlucky ones, the kid with no grandparent to teach her how to play with a dangerous thing. In a safe way.

And isn't that what being a grandparent is all about? Passing on our collective knowledge to our offspring? Looking out for their well-being by teaching them the old-fashioned ways?

Ah, who am I kidding? The teaching was all secondary; I was just having fun.

Learn more about this author, Sheree Zielke.
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