Snow Day
There is no preschool today. Kiddo and I have the luxury of sitting at the table, he with his toast, I with my tea, a small lit candle between us. It is dim in the kitchen and we look outside to the luminating sky, the pale whispers of snowflakes on the gray morning air.
We play this morning, like Peter*, calling across the street to find a friend to walk and play with. They are two peas in a pod of silly and childishness. They scoop snow from every place and want to put it in their mouths, they dash balls of snow to the ground, and when it is nearly all melted too fast, they throw dirty snow at each other, and two mothers stand by, shaking their heads and laughing at lost causes.
Kiddo's across the street, playing, and so the snow begins again. Put the kettle on for tea, put the stereo on for some Monk, "Straight, No Chaser", and "Locomotive" greets me like the kind of friend that you want to see at a train station, one you haven't seen in a while, but can slide right back into that rhythm and rapport with. I love that song, that traveling song. I see the snow climbing up on top of itself, climbing to become something on the boughs of the plum tree in the backyard, something present and real and now something part of the tree itself, if only for the moment. It highlights the shape of the branches, reaching out and up in it's little dwarf tree fashion.
The hemlocks in the side yard are looking postcard perfect and the choke cherries stand stark in the white snow, their straight rigid stick-fingers reaching up to the sky between two kitchens, mine and my neighbors.
Sandbox covered, the big turquoise blue ball wears a wig of white, like some discarded old-man Muppet head. Big fat flakes fall now, and it's better than television.
I'm off now to sip my tea and stare out the window.
*From Ezra Jack Keat's "The Snowy Day" ..."Peter called to his friend from across the hall and together, they went out into the deep, deep snow."
We play this morning, like Peter*, calling across the street to find a friend to walk and play with. They are two peas in a pod of silly and childishness. They scoop snow from every place and want to put it in their mouths, they dash balls of snow to the ground, and when it is nearly all melted too fast, they throw dirty snow at each other, and two mothers stand by, shaking their heads and laughing at lost causes.
Kiddo's across the street, playing, and so the snow begins again. Put the kettle on for tea, put the stereo on for some Monk, "Straight, No Chaser", and "Locomotive" greets me like the kind of friend that you want to see at a train station, one you haven't seen in a while, but can slide right back into that rhythm and rapport with. I love that song, that traveling song. I see the snow climbing up on top of itself, climbing to become something on the boughs of the plum tree in the backyard, something present and real and now something part of the tree itself, if only for the moment. It highlights the shape of the branches, reaching out and up in it's little dwarf tree fashion.
The hemlocks in the side yard are looking postcard perfect and the choke cherries stand stark in the white snow, their straight rigid stick-fingers reaching up to the sky between two kitchens, mine and my neighbors.
Sandbox covered, the big turquoise blue ball wears a wig of white, like some discarded old-man Muppet head. Big fat flakes fall now, and it's better than television.
I'm off now to sip my tea and stare out the window.
*From Ezra Jack Keat's "The Snowy Day" ..."Peter called to his friend from across the hall and together, they went out into the deep, deep snow."
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