Let my igloo be your muse

As is true with much of the country, the town of Assumption Illinois has gotten substantially more snow than usual this winter. Each time it snows, we check to see if it is the right consistency to make a snowman with my son. Three different times, my wife checked it out and had my son and I bundled up and rushing out the door in snowmanticipation only to find out that she had judged the snow incorrectly. We then play around in the snow for a while before going back inside so that getting on all our warm clothing wasn't a total waste of time.

This past week, a few days after the snowpocalypse, we finally got some snow we could work with. Now, this wasn't quite snowman snow, but I quickly judged it capable of forming a sweet snow fort, or, dare I say, a stinkin' igloo.

I ran into the basement and grabbed a sled with a pull string and the two snow brick forms my parents bought for Jack last winter and got to work. I started with the weakly fort we had formed in a previous snow by making a snow pile between a tree and a slide and digging out the middle and got to work shoring it up.

Soon I was slowly making progress, alternating between loads of snow and trips around the yard with Jack in the sled. Once the base was done and I could start setting in rows of bricks, slowing sloping them towards the center, the work went pretty quick. Eventually I made a full arch over the doorway with Jack handing me bricks while I held the sides of the arch in place until the keystone was set.


That was the last help Jack provided. After that point I split my time between the igloo and Jack -- looking up to see he had disappeared and mounting the search to find him in the front yard, convincing him not to climb on or knock down the igloo, and asking him if he was alright as he laid on his side in the snow for more than a quarter hour.

The work wasn't easy, and the day after I am sore all over - but the hardest part was mentally convincing myself to keep working. Jack would have rather knocked it down than sat inside and wasn't all that interested in having a completed roof, so I quickly realized that I was a man of nearly 30 years old making a snow fort for myself.

Soon after I became encouraged that the end was in site, the construction got difficult. I was working on a small space inside the igloo, the snow was getting softer, the sides weren't sticking, and I experienced a few minor cave-ins. I was pretty close to declaring it "close enough."

Then Jack went inside the igloo and suddenly it was cool again. He wanted a ceiling, he liked his igloo. He wanted to help me make bricks and put them in the sled and pull it over. I took a step back and looked at the thing and it actually kinda looked like an igloo. I knew it would come together and it would be worth it if for no other reason than that I could show it off in pictures and give Jack that memory.

Filling in that last section wasn't pretty - it involved a few tries and some oddly shaped snow chunks and at least one frustrated outburst - but I did it. I don't know what use we will get from it, or how long it will even last, but I am pleased it is complete.

Sometimes we invest a lot of time and energy in projects and when the work starts to get tough, or our initial motivation wanes, or we experience set backs and discouragement, we declare it "good enough" and abandon the effort.

How much satisfaction do we miss out on when we close down shop early? How many successes do we turn into failures by cutting bait right before something takes the hook?

I am horrible at encouragement - in fact, if there is an opposite of a spiritual gift, that is what I have in that area - but let me offer this: if the goal is worthy, then perseverance is in order. Oftentimes the hardest bit is the bit right before we taste success. My six month old son Liam cries the hardest just before he gets to sleep. It is the most frustrating part of a given experience and it often doesn't make much sense that the goal would be attained so shortly after such upheaval, but let my igloo be your muse. Because it rules.