Snow days

"Clip from a Winter Diary"

In the middle of the morning, she makes slices of herb bread with melted cheese. When they fuss, all day she cuts small squares and hands them to the complaining mouths. Later, she finds black cheese stuck in the rug, on the couch, but she has given, and that is all they want, although she knows it is not food they desire.

Sometimes she gives out a story, and they huddle next to her and put her arm around them and fight about who has the most of her body next to them. The four of them are a corral, a fence within which she moves. She may run but not too far or fast. She may do whatever she wishes but inside the fence of them. The movement of them and the way they appear draws her toward them. She offers hot chocolate, a bubble bath, and they bound at her, squeeze her, and she turns on the TV and they disappear into its living color.

With snow on the ground, there is hope, and she bundles them and goes out into the pinched whiteness, its scrunch, scrunch. The noise of them dissipates and falls powdery off the branches of evergreens. She tucks the baby in a box with a blanket, so that only his round eyes show, and tugs him around and around, and around the yard, her back hot and her cheeks burning.

Anything that requires her mind can only occur in small, indecent intervals. Her body carries on with sweeping, crying, bursting out in laughter, and bends 100 times a day toward a toy, a child, mechanically, rhythmically. The computer, house building plans, articles to write, lie untended, five minutes here, twenty there.

The snow and the sleigh bring her to life, and the moon comes up over the trees and when she lifts the baby from the box, he is still warm.

PS The snowman's name is Frederic.

PSS Thank you again Leslie for this beautiful piece from Kelly Cunnane. It is amazing how relevant it still is a year later.