Quiet

I could get lost in that tangle of snowy branches for hours.

This morning my children all slept in late while I consumed two cups of coffee and took a shower (!). Michael was the first to get up. Usually he is the last.

I brought him downstairs with me, and we sat on the couch together--he under the blue blankie I knit for him before he was born, me under a blue wool blanket given to us as a wedding gift, and he very delighted that we matched--and we simply watched the snow falling for a little bit, just the two of us.

(There is 2-3 feet out there! I promised him that later today we'd take him out and put him in it to see how tall it was.)


I was trying to figure out what it was about winter light that is so lovely, aside perhaps from its scarcity. I mean the light that comes inside when there is snow on the ground like this. I usually love warm light, but the snow-light is much cooler. I think it is that it comes from all around--up from the ground as well as from the sky--that makes it especially lovely. Soft light that falls from every angle. It is one of the reasons why I love (and very rarely complain about) snow--if we're to have winter, then let's have the beauty of it!

(Although the repairman who's been working on our bathroom might disagree with me. I imagine we are paying him for the time he's spent shoveling his way out of our driveway. If it didn't seem rude I would remind him to press the gas pedal gently like he's walking on eggshells, not to floor it and dig himself further in ... as Keith so often reminds me. :) )

Thirty Days

It is my second to last real day in this apartment before I pack up some things and move back with my parents to await the wedding. When I come back—save, maybe, a night here and there if I need to be in the city for some reason—it will be with Keith, and it will not be to this corner bedroom, with its sunny windows and desk in the corner. I am both glad of that, and a little nostalgic.

Right now I am knitting nupps for my bridal shawl, and it isn’t the horrid struggle so many knitters complain of, but a peaceful process. I sit here, all the blinds drawn open, surrounded by trees that wave through the windows, as though I myself am sitting in their branches. There are passing cars and muffled voices, but those tend to fade into the background of my awareness. There is also a chiming from someone’s windcatcher, a series of high, melancholy notes that follow one another sometimes at a distance, sometimes on each other’s heels, and I think I should like to write the story they are telling, the one that pulls at something in my chest and the corners of my eyes.