To the Editor:  

This time of year I get a little nostalgic and yearn for some of the childhood events that were a fixture come wintertime in my hometown Troy. I think about how back then I was so sad to see summer go and how I would miss those Fridays spent shopping with my Aunt Helen, eating at Manory’s, picking up my Uncle Jim at The Troy Record (it will always be The Troy Record to me!), then diving into Snyder’s Lake to wash off the heat of the city.

But I was also excited to know that with the cold came a visit to my cousins’ house by the lake, sledding, snowball fights, and ice skating (“Is the lake ready yet?” became a weekly question around mid-November).

Yet as I grow older, I dread the winter and all the chilly preparedness that comes with it. My summers spent at camp by Snyder’s Lake seem far behind me.

I often retire upstairs to my “woman cave” that I have decorated with Adirondack-y paraphernalia, and peruse my “attic memories” that I have tried to neatly stack under the eaves: contents of old boxes that remain a mystery until I re-open them, an old letter my aunt wrote to me shortly before she passed away, a pilled and stretched brown sweater that my mother always wore at camp, old horseshow ribbons, and keepsakes that don’t mean anything to anyone else but me. They are the memorabilia that helped my life unfold!

And the photographs — oh the photographs! Books, binders, boxes, and bunches of them, stirring the most vivid memories, especially the small faded Polaroid of me in my blue snowsuit. I can close my eyes and still feel the scratchiness of that red plaid scarf, the bite of cold on my cheeks, that excitement I used to find in winter!

I can hear the sound of my skates crunching away when they hit roughed-up patches from dug-in blades. I can see the glare of the sun on the plowed areas of ice on Snyder’s Lake and the puffs of my breath as I try to keep up with my sister Peg as she glides across, her ponytail going back and forth as she skates alongside my cousin Paul.

Sledding is also on my happy list of childhood memories — the “community” hill next door to our house on Desson Avenue (though it pales in comparison to Tawasentha!), my mittens hung with globes of ice, and the homemade hot chocolate and Freihofer’s rolls waiting for me as I shed my snowsuit and my feet regained their feeling!

The reminiscing makes me want to go out there and build a snowman with my granddaughter because, after all, as cold as it may get and as old as I may get, I’m still young at heart!

Mary E. Cummings 

Guilderland