For love of my grandmother and snow

It’s snowing, Mema. Really coming down. We’ve shoveled four times this morning, but it doesn’t look like we did much.

It’s an Emily Dickinson type of snow day, you know, the one that begins:
It sifts from leaden sieves…It sprinkles all the wood…ruffling all the fence posts as ankles of a queen…then vanishes…denying it has been…

I never can remember the whole thing, but it’s my favorite, just like this kind of snow – soft, steady, powdered-sugar snow. It blankets the earth with a thick woolly layer of purity and silence.

Whenever it snows, I think of you. Even though you aren’t here, and I’m too old to be out playing in the snow (well, mostly), I know you’re watching me out there while I’m shoveling and enjoying every minute. Up until my back starts aching and my nose drips so much I can’t stand it.

I’d fall back into the snow in our yard and make a snow angel for you, but I would be covered up before I could finish. I would vanish, like the dead grass and leaves, with only a faint mounded outline of something under the snow. Brr. We won’t go there. Keep happy thoughts of snow.

I wouldn’t mind being snowbound for a few days, just long enough to work on my writing or quilts, to make a big batch of hearty vegetable soup with chunks of venison. You never had the opportunity to try my soup with venison. You’d like it. I know Granddad would, too.

My other half, on the other hand, would not handle being snowbound for a few days well. He can’t bear to be shut in that long. He’d rather shovel his way to the end of the street in order to break free and travel, even if it wasn’t for anything critical. He doesn’t know how to occupy himself in the house or the garage with creative projects to keep his mind and hands busy. He has plenty of them waiting on him, even ones of his own choosing, but they intimidate him. I think they make him feel trapped. Ironic, isn’t it? What makes him feel confined makes me feel liberated. Go figure.

Well, guess I’d better go bundle back up. The guys will return in about an hour, and I need to shovel the latest inch of fluffy white off the drive so they don’t mash it into ice pulling in. But I’ll be thinking of you the whole time, with lots of love between the huffing and sniffing. It’s snowing.

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