Hide and Seek with Mom in the Snowy Woods

The bulk of my elementary years were spent in Clarksville, Tennessee, about 40 miles from Nashville and just a few miles from Fort Campbell on the Kentucky border. We lived on a three acre lot adjacent to the school, and my brother, sister, and I reveled in playing outside as much as possible.

Every day at 6:00pm Dad would turn off the main road and into our pastoral subdivision in his little bright red Opal. Sometimes Mom would walk with us to meet him on the road, and we would shout with excitement when we could see his car in the traffic.

On one particular snowy evening, Dad called and said he'd be a little late. Mom wanted to walk out to the main road anyway, I suppose to get some exercise, so we all put on our coats and stocking caps and gloves and ventured out into the crisp night air. The snow was still falling gently and the wind was only very slight, so it was quite a pleasant walk as we crunched crunched crunched down the road.

When we reached the edge of the subdivision, we turned around and headed toward home. Mom said, "Let's play hide and seek! I'll hide first." We kids very dutifully closed our eyes and counted to 50, and then the search began.

It was snowing a little harder and we couldn't see too far ahead, but I had read enough of the Hardy Boys to know that all we really needed to do was to follow Mom's footprints in the snow. With the snowfall Mom's latest steps were relatively easy to follow.

"Look!" my little brother exclaimed when we reached our driveway, as he pointed to the left. The tracks veered off into the woods. Anticipating that we'd find Mom at any moment, we quickened our pace and followed the steps into the woods. I remember thinking I'd have to talk to Mom about how to cover her steps, sweeping them with a branch or something so that they'd be harder to see.

At any rate, we marched and marched and marched and ... suddenly the tracks stopped. Right there, at the base of a fairly large dogwood, the tracks ended.

"Where'd she go?" my sister asked.

I whistled, impressed. "Mom did figure out that she needed to cover her tracks," I said. We circled the tree, but she had done a great job hiding her footsteps. We each decided to go a different direction -- Jen to the left, Bar to the right, and I straight.

We assigned signals so that we could communicate: Jen was an owl and would "hoot hoot," Bar was a bobwhite and would do the "bob white, bob white" whistle, and I, of course, was the coyote with a ferocious "A-Woooooooo" howl.

We took our respective paths deeper into the woods. I was thoroughly enjoying this adventure. I had fully expected to find Mom in another minute or two. But ... three or four minutes passed, then five, and still no sign of our female parental unit.

Then I heard, "Bob white, bob white."

I answered back with a hearty, "A-Wooooo." I heard our Owl Sister off in the distance too.

The sounds of the bobwhite repeated, and I dutifully did the "A-Wooooooo" again.

And a moment later, in the distance, I again heard, "Hoot hoot hoot." I wondered if Barry had found her. I started walking back towards him, following my tracks. It was then that I realized that we had assigned our animal call signals, but we hadn't said what the signals meant. The "bob white, bob white" could have meant that he found Mom, but it could have meant any number of things.

"Did you find her?" I asked excitedly when I was within talking range.

"No, not exactly," said Barry. "But I have to go to the bathroom. Can we go home now?"

"Well, okay," I said, though I was disappointed at not having found Mom.

So the three of us started heading home. After two or three steps, though, Jen said, "Hey wait, we can't leave Mom out here."

"Oh yeah," we agreed in unison. We called out, "Mom! Mom! Ma-aaaaaaaaaam!"

Nothing.

We called again. No response. We walked around the woods for another minute or two, ending up very near to where Mom's tracks had ended.

There was silence for a moment or two, and then ... a laugh pierced the snow-filled darkness. Where did it come from? I didn't see it in front of us, nor was it to the left or to the right. Spinning around, I expected to see Mom there.

Nothing.

Then Jen said, "Hey, look!" and she pointed up in the tree. There, some fifteen feet perhaps off the ground, sat a bundled figure barely discernible in the darkness.

"Mom!" I exclaimed. "How did you get up there?"

She climbed down, laughing, and we all joined in the laughter as we hiked back to the house, looking forward to a warm meal and some hot chocolate and marshmallows.