Stories from the Personality Café: Winter’s Masterpiece

It was one of those perfect winter mornings in Southern Ontario, when the world seems to pause, wrapped in a pristine blanket of fresh snow. The kind of morning where even the most dedicated commuters take one look out their windows and decide that maybe today is a day best spent at home. Four friends living on Carl Jung Way woke up to discover that Mother Nature had transformed their world into a scene worthy of a snow globe; the kind you’d find in your grandmother’s china cabinet, except without the plastic palm trees that somehow always end up in Canadian winter scenes.

For Aurelio Doré, the morning started with his usual double-double, brewed at home in the coffee maker older than him, from a store that went out of business long before he started drinking coffee. Sure, it made a terrifying screaming noise every now and then, but it still worked, and coffee from any another machine just didn’t taste right. When he opened his curtains and saw the blanket of snow, his first thought went to his schedule being thrown off, but quickly switched to childhood memories; building snowmen with his cousins on sunny winter days. A smile lit up his face as he thought about how his friends on Carl Jung Way had become a sort of chosen family over the years.

His good friend and neighbour to the right, Skyler Bleu was already bouncing off the walls of his house like a caffeinated ping-pong ball. Within minutes, his group text had pinged everyone’s phones: “SNOW DAY EMERGENCY MEETING! Operation Snowman needs YOU!” followed by no fewer than twelve snowman emojis and one inexplicable flamingo. Despite being a 28-year-old data analyst who works from home, Skyler knew that logging into Teams and missing out on a day with his friends just wasn’t an option.

Across the street, Esmeralda Greenfield, Esme to her friends, was standing at her window with her morning tea, wheels already turning in her mind. While others saw a blanket of snow, she saw untapped potential. “We should build a snowman,” she thought, “but not just any snowman, we might as well build one that’ll make every other snowman in the neighbourhood look like amateur hour.” Not that it was a competition, of course. But if there was a good time to put that master’s degree in civil engineering to good use, this was it.

A few doors down, Ginger Zucca was already three projects deep into her morning; restringing her guitar, sketching out plans for an indoor greenhouse she’d been itching to build, and keeping one eye on the neighbourhood from her window seat. She’d been the first to spot the possibilities with snowfall, her mind already racing with ideas for snow sculptures she’d seen during her travels. When Skyler’s text arrived, she was already pulling on her boots, thinking about every unusual item in her garage that could give their snowman some extra flair. Sure, she enjoyed her quiet mornings, but she’d never been one to pass up a chance for a new adventure, especially one that involved creating something extraordinary out of the ordinary.

They gathered in Aurelio’s front yard; his covered porch had become their unofficial meeting spot over the years, complete with a stockpile of extra mittens and hats he kept “just in case” anyone needed them. Aurelio was always prepared for any situation. As everyone arrived, he passed out the hand warmers he’d tucked into his coat pockets, having anticipated cold fingers long before anyone else thought of it.

What followed was hours of what could only be described as organized chaos. Aurelio attempted to establish a proper snow-rolling protocol, complete with designated snow-gathering zones. Skyler kept getting distracted by making snow angels, claiming he was “testing the snow consistency” but really just enjoying himself immensely. Esme watched the traditional snowman-building process unfold for about ten minutes before challenging the whole concept. “But why do we always build from bottom to top?” she wondered, already envisioning a different approach that would change how everyone thought about snowman construction. Ginger, meanwhile, quietly went about turning their rapidly growing creation into something that looked less like your standard issue snowman and more like a snow sculpture that wouldn’t have been out of place in an art gallery. When Skyler’s enthusiastic rolling accidentally created an oval instead of a sphere, she turned it into a feature rather than a flaw.

By early afternoon, they stood back to admire their creation. It was, without a doubt, the most unique snowman Carl Jung Way had ever seen. It leaned ever so slightly to the left, not enough to fall, just enough to look like it was about to tell you a really good joke you don’t want your mother to hear. Its arms weren’t the usual sticks, but rather a series of smaller branches covered in glitter that Skyler had liberated from another neighbour’s front porch decorations. Esme had somehow engineered a way to give it eyebrows that could be adjusted to change its expression, and Skyler carved their initials into a chunk of ice at the base.

“It’s perfect,” Aurelio said, already imagining the neighbourhood kids’ faces when they saw it after school.

“It’s totally weird,” Skyler beamed. “I love it!”

“This changes everything about snowman building,” Esme said with satisfaction. “Just wait until everyone sees what’s possible.”

“Almost perfect,” Ginger grinned, and with a few quick, clever adjustments to the arms, she made their snowman strike a pose that made it look like it was about to break into dance. “Now it’s perfect.”

Later, as they warmed up with hot chocolate, Skyler excitedly proclaimed “we should do this again tomorrow, there’s more than enough snow!” forgetting that he works full-time. Aurelio, wanting to make sure that he’d be dressed right for the temperature, asked, “what’s the weather looking like for tomorrow?” Esme, already looking at her smartwatch, looked up with a sigh “15 degrees, 100% chance of rain.” Ginger, without missing a beat, asked, “anyone got space in their freezer?”