SLEIGH RIDE

From the time I was a little girl I always wanted to ride in a sleigh with the snow falling about me gently in the silence of the night except for the sleigh bells ringing and the sound of the horse hoofs in the deep snow. You need lots of snow on the ground for a smooth ride and your tracks are the only ones that can be seen on the narrow trail.  I see myself in a fur-trimmed parka looking beautiful like Sonja Henie with the moon shining down and everything serene.  Being a little girl, I always thought of myself in the sleigh alone, because I couldn’t picture a boy in the sleigh with me.  The driver was some anonymous male and he would be cracking the whip, gently of course. He was probably an employee of my family, if my family ever had enough money to own a farm.

As I grew older, I would see movies with farm families going to church at Christmas in a large sleigh pulled by swift horses, the passengers filled with the joy of the season.  Wow! I wished that could be me. I would be laughing and singing carols and hymns, loving all of it just as they were.

 I had never personally seen a sleigh when I was child. However at the age of 17, a friend of the boy I was dating invited us to his girlfriend’s house.  She lived on a farm and we were to go for a ride in her sleigh. In my excitement, I dressed in what I thought appropriate, although at that time I didn’t have a parka with a fur trimmed hood.  By the time we got there the snow had turned to slush. I was totally devastated. I never even got to the barn to see the sleigh and besides I had ruined my new suede shoes.

I guess the only time I saw a real sleigh up close was when we lived in Chicago and our neighbor won the grand prize at the opening of “Santa’s Village”   Their prize was a sleigh fill with toys to be delivered the week before Christmas.  A large van parked on the main road at the foot of our street and a sleigh and reindeer were lifted out.  It was cold and miserable when Santa came down our ice covered street in the sleigh pulled by a reindeer that kept slipping and sliding and had to be held up by the crew.  All the neighbors got to be on television that night.  The family with five kids had a joyous Christmas that year. All I remember is the fake Santa and the slipping and sliding of the reindeer.  My children tell me they remember that day, even the family’s name and how jealous they were of the many presents their friends got. All this had happened over forty years ago.

I never did ride in a sleigh but I don’t think I suffered because of it. I still have wonderful pictures in my mind of what it would have been like.  Maybe the experience wouldn’t have been as great as my imagination and I would be left with disappointment.  Isn’t that what happens in life?

I’ve always been a nostalgic kind of person and I long for the old days, real and imagined. I can still see myself in our family room in Pittsburgh with the lights dimmed and looking out our French doors at the winter snow covered landscape.  Since we now live in Florida, nothing thrills me more than a Budweiser Commercial featuring the Clydesdale Horses pulling a large sleigh with the sound of their bells ringing, hoofs clip-clopping and the snow falling gently on the ground.