Soundlessly, with all the roar of a dog whistle, settling on the thin green pines, threading needle through snowflake like ornaments eleven months too soon. Steadily, purposely, falling falling, drifting from snowman cookie frosting clouds, sprinkling frosted blades and frozen needles. Gathering and waiting on swollen pines and sleeping windowsills, where creeping eyelids rest to widen and then smile and cheer at the brown ice slush filled roads and pristine playgrounds twinkling in morning joy. Playtime rapiers hanging from rooftops, snow filled arena, and racetrack ample canvas for morning imaginations, while snowplows struggle and snowballs battle and every father lover child thinks snow day.
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It’s still dark and the vaguely morning sky flashbulbs with swirling storms of snowflakes swept up in the steady beam of dual halogen bulbs. Heaving fiercely beneath their glow, the curved yellow plow growling in search of asphalt and the icy slush and browning snow that resists its passage.
The front windshield wipers squeak and fidget beneath the whitewashing weight of the sky and Sean McLaughlin slows with every turn and squints through the glass, trying to separate the pavement from the sidewalk. He’s been out since ten the night before, and his cab is littered with empty styrofoam dunkin donuts cups and some hand warmers, plus a large metal thermos from Christine on Christmas two weeks before. The heater works only sometimes and so he keeps a seasoned wool blanket stretched tight over his lap that fills the cab with the smell of dog hair and salt from the winters before when Sammy would ride with him. Back before the arthritis and dysplasia had resigned her to the rug by the stove, back when it was for both of them younger days.
Yesterday was Christine’s birthday and they had spent the night at home in front of the TV watching the snow. When his phone had rung just before the late night news she had turned to him and said, “Go. You need the overtime.”
Storms had always been too early or too late for Sean. Either they did not know how to keep time or they plain did not care.
Now he is alone in the dark of his cab with the thermos from her and a broken heater, an old smelly blanket, and a wish for spring and the overtime check. And all the while the flakes all surrounding and falling dispassionately around him.
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Laying in bed still, the comforter down around my knees, a glass of water on the bedside table, and the clock blinking noontime.
“You car is completely snowed in. I don’t think you’re going to make that meeting.”
Water running in the kitchen down the stairs, cupboards swinging and clacking shut, and porcelain on the countertop.
“How do you like your coffee?” she calls again.
Lifting the shade the window is half covered in frost and peering over the top I can see only snow and snow everywhere. It covers my car up past the license plate and hides the mailbox post in what seems to me as marshmallow fluff. The road is indistinguishable from the lawn and I know that I’m going anywhere.
First snow day of the New Year, I think, and I call back, “A little bit of sugar, thanks.”
I don’t actually have a meeting but I hadn’t been planning on dinner and breakfast. The room smells like last night, like alcohol and flesh and frosty mornings. But at least the sheets are soft and warm, as white as the fluff outside the window and I think now about the coffee brewing in the kitchen and the woman I barely know behind it.
Now she comes back to the bedroom and places two snow-white mugs on the bedside table. She squints at the brightness beyond the window and climbs in beside me, smiling more brilliantly than anything I’ve seen in a long time. Snow day, I think again.
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I’m awake now but I don’t move in my blanket like a caterpillar in a cocoon is what they’re called like I’m hibernating and I keep my eyes pressed tight together. I feel the cold shape of the spoon under my pillow and squeeze it tightly its supposed to bring the snow day I can’t hear the news downstairs maybe they already know its cancelled they said they would call us to say for sure I hope they did I hope they did. I open one eye and my room is too bright for the morning maybe its lunch time already maybe mom let me sleep because no school today! I can’t wait any more I jump out of bed run to the window tear the blinds and my heart explodes. Winter wonderland its like that Rudolph movie we watched on Christmas at Auntie Chris’s and there’s even more coming down right now and they look like the flakes we make in art class with white tissue paper and scissors and no ones are the same because they’re all unique like us Mrs. Stangle says. After I have breakfast I can go sledding once I have my snow pants and boots on Mom said I could yesterday and a snow fort to keep the girls out and hot cocoa for lunch and I’m smiling with ears it’s a snow day!
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