In A Holidaze(21)

Our bait works beautifully. Ricky meanders over, eyes Thea. “What is that?”

I see his trash talk and knock it down, coyly running a finger beneath her artistically sculpted jaw. “You know exactly what it is. Her name is Thea, but I like to think of her as filet mignon.”

He tilts his head, walking in a wide circle around her. I can tell he’s shocked and impressed; Andrew and I are bringing our A-game.

Finally Ricky speaks, but it comes out with a jealous edge. “I don’t know, Mae. Have you seen our bear?”

Giving it a brief glance, Andrew says, “Oh, that bark-covered lump of snow over there?”

“Hey, that’s going to be my masterpiece!” With a laugh, Mom throws a loose snowball in Andrew’s direction.

Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Dad stands up about halfway between them and the snowball hits him with a thud, squarely on the side of his neck. The ice slides under his collar, and I see a big puff of it disappear beneath his sweater.

My stomach drops. Mom is lighthearted and fun-loving. Dad is . . . well, he is not. He is kind but sensitive, and never good at being the butt of a joke.

Please, I think. Don’t fight. Don’t derail this day.

Mom playfully singsongs, “Oops! Did I hit you, Dan?”

The group holds its collective breath. Mom, unfazed, does a saucy little dance. This woman is playing with fire.

Holding eye contact, Dad bends to collect and form a perfect—and terrifyingly compact—snowball. I deflate in relief when he stands and I see that he’s grinning. When he tosses the snowball at her, I swear it whistles ominously through the air, missing her by only inches.

Mom screeches in delight. Dad laughs, bending to make another one, calling out, “Oh, you’re in for it now.”

This is new.

But my nerves are growing frayed again; Andrew and I are doing so well with Thea, and for a few blissful seconds, I actually forgot that I’ve lived this day before and just let myself enjoy it. But being in snow with this crowd is a bit like walking around in a pool of gasoline with a lit match. Snowball fights are always a possibility.

The twins, who have been stockpiling a monster number of snowballs themselves, take Dad’s act as a sign that they are good to launch, and before I realize what’s happening, the entire scene is devolving into a huge war. Match to gasoline: Zachary pelts his dad Aaron in the back of the leg, who blows out the crotch of his designer jeans as he attempts to tuck and roll for cover. Standing again, he pelts Kyle in the stomach, who pelts Dad on the arm. Dad aims for Kyle but hits Lisa in the shoulder, and she retaliates with a vicious snow bullet that hits him squarely between the shoulder blades. Apparently her aim with a snowball is much better than her aim with a camera.

“Guys, stop!” I hold my arms out, but no one is paying attention. Not even Ricky seems fazed at this breach of tradition; he’s beaming snowballs at his sons with a laugh that seems to echo off the cabin, the trees, the mountains.

People are running, diving, dodging behind snow creations and—to my immense shock—knocking them over. With a flash of Aaron’s hot-pink briefs, he and Dad charge, and Mom and Ricky’s snow bear goes down in a powdery crumble. With the twins’ enthusiasm, Theo and Miles’s elephant is reduced to a sad, lumpy mound, and in retaliation, they take out Lisa and Kyle’s giraffe—already an overly ambitious project. By the time Theo stands, the giraffe has lost its head and now looks like a white boulder. Only an hour ago, the lawn was a perfect, thick sheet of fluffy, wet snow. Now patches of dirt peek through. Blades of grass are mixed with broken, muddy snowballs. It is unbridled, wintry chaos.

“What is happening?” I shout to Andrew through the commotion.

“At last, tradition is crumbling!” He wears a maniacal grin as he runs to take a bracing stance in front of Thea, arms wide, adding gallantly, “They can take this day, but they cannot take our monkey!”

Panic climbs like a vine in my throat. Sure, snowball fights are a blast, but this isn’t how today is supposed to go. We can have a snowball fight tomorrow, or even Christmas Eve. I mean, if we’re willing to throw this tradition away, what happens later tonight when Dad and Ricky go to pick out the Christmas tree? Will they ignore the tradition of hunting for the best one, and instead bring home the first one they see? Are we going to disregard everything that makes this vacation perfect?

Throwing my arms out wide, I protect Thea as long as I can, through what feels like an insane flurry of flying snowballs. But out of the corner of my eye, just as Andrew nails Miles with a perfect shot right to the groin, I see Theo making a swan dive in our direction.

Andrew tackles his brother, but it’s too late. Thea, the final animal, goes down in an explosion of snow and wrestling limbs just as Benny steps outside.

The chaos clears, and the view before me is reduced to a gathering of panting, snow-dusted idiots.

Benny stops at the bottom of the stairs and looks around, confused. “I was gone for, like, two minutes, you guys.”

With everything destroyed, they finally take a few moments to survey the destruction on the front lawn. I expect devastation and remorse. I expect Ricky to let out a wailing, heartbroken What have we done?!

. . . But it never comes. Instead, he’s grinning at what a mess we all are, and then throws his head back and lets out a delighted, booming laugh.

“What is wrong with you?” I cry out. “Don’t you get it? This is special! What about tradition? We won’t be able to keep doing this together if we don’t respect what we’ve all built!”