Chicago has had a mild winter in 2017, so much so that the lagoons near my home, which often freeze solid, had only a thin ice cover in January. As my Golden Retriever danced on the ice one morning, she fell through. The ground's disappearance terrified her. She began thrashing in the water, unable to hear me coaxing her toward shore.
I lay flat on the ice and skittered out to the edge, where I grabbed my girl as she flailed past me. I pulled her up next to me, but our combined weight broke the shelf and we both fell in. I got her back to shore by lifting her onto successive ice patches until we could climb out.
It was Little Women that trained me how to handle this crisis: when Amy falls through the ice in the Charles River, Laurie lies flat, distributing his weight, and pulls her out. Little Women was one of the defining books of my childhood. I read it so many times
