Weather is often cited as a crutch in conversation — the subject belittled as a stand in for boring small talk. Why? Weather is fascinating. Seasons are important. Snow is magic.
How can I describe the feeling that consumes me when I wake up to my world blanketed in snow? It’s nostalgia, sure, but infused with childlike wonder. Andrew has realized this, sometimes teasing me with promise before I pry open my eyes. Kel — there’s like a foot of snow outside!
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Snow inspires play. Fala leaps ahead and shoves her entire face into the snow in front of her. Children move in a conveyor belt on the hillside in the park, singing all the way down, trudging back up. Red-nosed. Wet.
Snow invites us to pause. School gets cancelled. The office is closed. We stay inside, by the fireplace, refilling our mug every so often to keep our coffee warm. Or hot chocolate, with mini marshmellows.
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Winter landscapes: gray skies meet snowy earth, punctured by the reaching arms of bare trees. Snow holds all the promise of a bride. I write this sentence and delete it and rewrite it again. With snow, the glow-up is real. The previous homeowner joked to me, there’s a reason we listed our house in the winter! The summer turns our house into an urban jungle — weeds thriving and hedges unruly. But in the snow, our home is a storybook. Windows decorated with scrapbook corners of white.
Snow is my street in a new outfit. It’s extreme makeover: weather edition. It feels inherently lame to celebrate precipitation this way, but it really feels true for me. Snow is new, untouched, — an uncharted path, or the deer footprints before the rest of us woke up. Starchy, linen, fresh.
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Superload hit you? Send me your best snow pics, tell me about your favorite snow day.
❤️💕❤️💕