The inventiveness of a child

There is a kind of creativity that belongs solely to children. It is deft and exact in its perfection. I never fail to be amazed when I am confronted with this kind of inventiveness and yes, I must say with more than a measure of pride, it never ceases to amaze me how inventive my children are.

Fairly quickly into their first experience of snow this past holiday in Switzerland, K and C discovered, much to their dismay, that it was not all that easy to make a snowman. More to the point, it was nowhere as easy as their favourite comic strip snowman and snowball-building characters Calvin (& Hobbes) or Charlie Brown (Peanuts)had led them to believe. The snow on Pilatus mountain was feathery fine and would not scrunch. The snow on Tetlis was in large hard chunks. And on Mt. Rigi, the snow was ice.

But the backyard behind the house in which we stayed in the alpine village of Lauterbrunnen offered a generous expanse of knee-high snow that seemed altogether different. Maybe it was because this snow got more sunshine, I don't know. The children were thrilled. The day we arrived there, they insisted we simply stay home and veg and play in the snow. And that's what we did.

As they began attempts to construct their first snowman - K and C honed in a certain kind of texture of snow without which a snowman would be impossible to create.

"It's just a bit wet but not a bit melted," K explained to me. "It's called 'Core'" she said with utter seriousnes.

"Core?" I repeated.

"Yes, that's what I call it... Core"

K and C found sheets of "core" resting on dashboards of cars in the parking lot and lumps of it on the branches of the surrounding pine trees. They found it aplenty and hauled it in to our chosen snowman spot.

"Get the core; get the core!" They called to each other, unmindful of the blocks of ice that would occasionally fall with a crash from the nearby mountain falls. And whenever they found a supply of fresh core, say on the steps by the front door or by the fence - they squealed with excitement and delight. "It's core! It's core!"

And sure enough, "core" was the perfect texture for molding a snowman with a firm foundation - just as K had said.

As the one in charge of smoothing down and patting the snowman's curves for her strong and erect foundation (we named her Roxy), I too soon started calling for them to bring me more "core."

What can I say? Core was precisely what it was.