February 19 would have been my dad’s birthday. It was unsettling to not have him here.

As so often happens, the younger generation saved me from wallowing. My niece started a great thread in the family group chat. She posted some nice photos of his birthday gathering 3 years ago. We moved on his great love of whipped cream, and agreed that he was likely eating a giant bowl of it in heaven right now. My mother reminded us of one of his favorite Dutch sayings:

So delicious it’s as if angels are peeing on your tongue.

(Be either glad or sad that I could not get AI to produce an image of angels urinating.)

The chat quickly turned to his most epic birthday celebration. It was either 2005 or 2006 and he wanted to go sledding. But normal sledding was not good enough for him. He thought the grandkids were old enough to go sledding down The Bowl, aka The Blowhole–a giant hollowed-out dune a mile down the beach from their house. They kind of were. He was always pushing that “old enough” envelope, which is how we wound up with boiling pots of oil on the table for fondue at Christmas Eve when the youngest grandchild was 5.

On a normal day, hiking across the beach in February would have felt like an adventure. Here it is on a 2/19 in 2017, with snow melted but the ice hills intact on the shore, which was really cool.

On that day, however, it was a massive undertaking. There was a blizzard moving in, and there were actual gale-force winds on the beach. Walking to The Bowl, we faced that gale. We leaned forward into the wind with all our weight and didn’t fall. We walked with our sleds over our midsections while we held our arms open wide and the sleds didn’t fall. Any communication had to be yelling at the top of our lungs, and even that was barely heard between the roar of the wind and the layers of scarves over our faces. There was no way to be properly bundled up against it. But it was such hard work to walk against it on the frozen sand (some of us taking turns pulling the little girls on a sled) that we kept warm. My mother remembers my son, “hiking through the wind and cold with twinkle in his eyes as if he was impervious to the arctic conditions.”

When finally made it to The Bowl, we discovered that the pre-blizzard wind had blown off all the snow. We faced a mountain of ice and sand.

It looked impossible. It was impossible!

My dad, brother, and the big grandsons (between 7-10?) climbed up the right side of The Bowl, where the hills were lower and marginally less steep. Even so, my sister-in-law remembers “the looks of terror on the guys’ faces, even Dad, going down that super steep side hill on the toboggan together! Clouds of sand flying up behind them.”

The rest of us stood around and climbed a little bit, mosly trying to figure out how long we’d have to stay there for it to count as not giving up.

And then my mother looked up at the top of The Bowl and asked, “What is that?”

A tiny dot was hurtling down from the highest and steepest part of the dune. It got closer and we realized it was my sister-in-law. She had quietly climbed up and done it!! It was amazing. She said she was sore for days after, but it was worth it.

The hike back to the house was easier because those gale-force winds now propelled us forward. Even so, the little girls had to be put into Oma’s bed, piled high with blankets, their hands wrapped around mugs of hot chocolate.

It should be noted that this was not the only time a family outing involved dangerous winds. When we lived in Australia from 1974-77, we went camping on the East Coast of Queensland. During a monsoon. On the top of a hill with no vegetation. In a canvas tent with metal poles. We were on the edge of the weather system, but I remember the deafening rain and the tent walls acting like a bellows, dramatically puffing in and out. Only after the kids’ tent collapsed and we had to huddle together in the parents’ tent did my dad agree it would be best to cut the camping trip short.

I so wish we had photos of any of those events, but alas, we do not.

We went sledding for his birthday again in 2010, this time at Mulick Park near my house. That’s the photo at the top of the post. Still plenty cold, and the hill was icy and fast. But nowhere near the Siberian conditions of the first Hart Clan sledding trip.

Life with my dad was never dull.