Snow

Oh, my. Perhaps an inch to two inches of snow in a few hours. The flakes are heavy and soft and I feel like licking our porch railing--the ice crystals would dissolve on my tongue instantly. I expect there will be at least a delay for school tomorrow morning. It's the witching hour, the minutes of transition toward dark when my whole spirit feels heavier and heavier, when I turn on a lamp and its light seems meager and insignificant.

After darkness falls completely, my head will clear and I'll be able to better map out our evening. It's Girls Night again, the first one in a month, and though the girls are perfectly happy and well behaved, part of me still waits for someone to blow in the door, someone with fresh perspective and who is old enough to legally split a beer. I think, bound and tied by my own personality which longs for company almost all the time, that to live alone would be terribly hard. I crave the solitude occasionally but then when I have too much of it (which is only once in a blue moon, mind you), I begin to feel listless and without direction.

Last night, Martin and Merry took a warm loaf of pumpkin bread through the snow to the neighbor's house. According to Martin afterward, the house was incredibly warm and thick with cigarette smoke from all the relatives assembled, who sat at a table and "kept to themselves" while the woman, recently widowed, talked to Martin and Merry for twenty minutes straight. She said she'd always been most afraid of being alone, and now God has made her alone. Her love, with her for twenty years, talked so much, she said--at the sink, while he washed dishes, everywhere--and it used to drive her crazy, but now the silence is what she hates most.

Apparently the children found him at the kitchen table, bloodied and still, and called 911 (their mother works nights and was still at work), and then they clung to him until the police and healthcare professionals arrived.

The little girl met us on the sledding hill, her lips bright with lipstick. "Did you hear?" she said in a level voice. "My dad died yesterday." Her eyes were flat; her voice repeated the news to every newcomer. "Did you hear?"

"I'm so sorry," I said, and put my arm around her shoulders. And I am sorry, deeply sorry that family should be left without a husband and daddy.

Snow still falls. Elspeth is climbing on my lap, begging for Lightning McQueen music. The oven has preheated. Merry just finished her puzzle. And the darkness is falling, but it doesn't seem darker. Instead the snow spreads across the sky, piling on dark branches of trees, falling silently and steadily, a quiet and magnificent beauty.