Sugar frosted flakes are covering the world outside my window.
Inside it’s warm – thank God. No power loss for us, though others are less fortunate. My husband came to bed last night telling of an entire town, just an hour south of here, going to bed without power. I wondered how many others were left to huddle in the dark and cold, as I turned over to turn out the light.
This morning I woke to an outdoor skating rink. Gingerly, I stepped outside to salt down the back porch. But already the lazy falling snow is blunting the slick ice, and soon it will be safe for even this thin-boned woman to venture out. I don’t imagine I will; I prefer my experience of winter delights from an inside perch.
Like my mother before me, I do love to watch a pretty snowfall. Suspended in time, each flake finds its own way to earth, riding an invisible magic carpet of air. About twenty feet up from the ground, some reverse direction to go up, making somersaults in the air as they fall back to earth. Some fall and turn sideways while others twist and turn in a spiral of snow ribbon. Fast then slow; thick then thin, the flakes build to cover the ground in mass.
The dogs can’t resist the snow. In and out… in and out… inandout… the door blurs in constant motion. Sometimes they go to answer a nature call, but mostly they go out to play.
I look out to see Max grazing on snow; he reminds me a graceful deer at a salt lick. Once he gets his fill he looks up and our eyes meet through the window. I know he expects me to drop everything to let him in, even without courtesy of bark. And like the dutiful mind-reading canine mom that I am, I open the door and in flashes a dark fur coat full of icy rhinestones.
Replete with snow, the dogs are now napping, insulated from an outside that has gone strangely silent without buses running up and down Walker. I’m ready to settle into the silence as well. I’ll carry a good book to curl up in my favorite spot. And between book covers, and the covers of a warm blanket and the cover of snow that has put the neighborhood to sleep, I’ll enter a new world. Between three layers of covers, I’ll be suspended in time.
Whether that new world will be one in a book …or one in a dream…. it’s too soon to tell. But I’ll keep you posted.
an everyday life 