Winter, 2011…

A family of five would bundle up and brave every snowfall. Together we’d roll snowballs over the white, picturesque hills in our backyard until we’d given rise to a family of snowmen, snowwomen, snowchildren. I’d pull the kids’ sleds uphill until my legs gave out. Afterward, I’d whip up a round of hot chocolate, and we’d gather around the hearth and sip like we were posing for a Norman Rockwell painting. (OK, there was no hearth.)

Five years later…

Doug pokes his head in the door during his first hour of snow-blowing. “Are you watching her?” he growls, nodding in the direction of Anna, who has suited up and is rolling around in the foot-high snow drifts piled on our deck. “She can get buried in that sh*t.”

“Of course I’m watching her,” I snap. “Every so often, I stand by the window and wave.” I search for the cleanest part of the window and snap a picture through it.

Five minutes later…

Anna bursts through the door, drenched from hat to boots. “Can I have hot chocolate?” she asks sweetly.

“You weren’t even out there for fifteen minutes!” is my indignant response. “Do I need to fix you a cup of hot chocolate every time you step outside?”

“But I really need it,” she pleads. A puddle of water begins to gather at her feet.

I sigh. “You never drink the hot chocolate. You just eat the marshmallows and leave the rest behind. Can’t I just get you a marshmallow instead?”

Forty-five minutes later…

A cup of hot chocolate sits cold on the table, minus the marshmallows, a chocolatly syrupy mass on the bottom of the cup.

“Why didn’t you drink your hot chocolate?” I demand.

“I’m waiting for it to cool down,” she shrugs.

Two hours later…

Doug bursts in, face red, blood boiling right through his Arctic-extreme Yukon overalls. He is grumbling about the snow, Connecticut taxes, the governor, and how I’d refused to up and leave this godforsaken state while we still had the chance.

I smile, search the database in my brain for some kind of consolation, and pull out the only thing I’ve got.

“Can I get you a cup of hot chocolate?”

Jon Mangiarcina and Doug have indisputably had some good times back in the day, from the Torrington High School parking lot to Woodstock to People’s Forest, all by means of Jon’s trusty Plymouth Satellite. Today, the good times roll on as we listen to the conversations of our children from the back of the minivan.

It’s a different conversation than one would expect from the offspring of Doug Lariviere and Jon Mangiaracina.

Sean, a six-year-old with an extensive vocabulary and enough eloquence in his back pocket to carry him through the next presidential debate, was engaged in a battle of wits with my Eva, two years his senior.

“Go ahead,” he challenged. “Ask me anything.”

Eva thought for a moment, then quizzed, “What’s a million plus a million plus a million?”

“Can’t do it,” Sean declared. “A million’s a word, not a number.”

“Yes, you can do it,” Eva corrected. “It’s 3 million.”

“No, it’s not.” I could practically hear Sean digging his heels into the car mat.

“You can even ask my mom,” Eva persisted. “She’s a math teacher.” She leaned forward, as though I hadn’t been hanging onto every word of their conversation. “Mom, isn’t a million plus a million plus a million three million?”

“Indeed it is,” was my verdict.

“Nope. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“It will someday,” Eva reassured. “When you’re in the third grade, you’ll understand these things.”

Before Sean could deliver his counter argument, Doug interjected.

“Speaking of a million, about a million years ago, me and your dad went to high school together,” he began.

“Woooow! High school?” Sean asked.

“That’s right. And there was this one particular day that we were sitting in health class taking a very important test.”

Thus ensued the familiar tale of how Jon broke the silence of that classroom in a manner that nearly lifted him from his chair, and how he immediately pointed at Doug and named him the culprit, and how Liz Bruno and Lynn DePretis scrunched up their noses in disgust and wailed, “DOOOUUUG!” and how no one could hear Doug’s protests of denial over the class’s clamor of blame, and how Doug and Mark Tedeschi were laughing so hard that Mrs. Pryor eyed them suspiciously and offered them a trip to the nurse’s office.

Eva listened to the tale in its entirety, then said, “You know, Sean, ‘a million’ means the same thing as ‘one million.’ Does it make more sense to you when I say ‘1 million plus 1 million plus 1 million equals 3 million’?”

Sean nodded. “So what that means,” he postulated, “is that words can be numbers. And numbers can be words.”

“That’s right!” shouted Eva, satisfied that she inspired this epiphany.

They say every generation is a little dumber than the one before it.

I say, there’s hope for us yet.

This summer we went to Lake George. I told the kids they could each take one suitcase and fill it up as they saw fit. I advised them that it was a short trip, and they should bring the barest of necessities.