Drizzle it in Honey

1.16.24

Snow blankets the unsightliness of my good intentions while bringing lightness to the dark. What is there not to like about snow? All my abandoned summer projects the laundry line that just wouldn’t stand up its large wooden pole cemented deep into the ground and up through a crab basket filled with stones that’s lying on its side unearthed I did not foresee the strength of wet bedsheets. The garden half-abandoned unripe vegetables that wanted to give back to us but didn’t. Overturned tomato cages and fallen branches used as trellises. Cardboard bedding and the vintage metal floral dining table and chairs left between rows from the year’s last lawn mowing. Garden tools waiting for me to stake the new shed it keeps blowing over. And it is blown over now in the tall golden grasses tucked into them and it’s all dressed in white loveliness. And the rolls of chicken wire left next to the temporary chicken fence that has become permanent… this morning Mama has gifted me a day’s free pass masquerading in snow all my little anxieties that litter my land. I see the possibility of beauty again in this muffled predawn. The snow is keeping my sounds and thoughts safe for me they’re not echoing off into the neighbor’s yard and across the fields they are still mine they aren’t going out into the world or floating off into the firmament. This is the most perfect day a temporary reprieve from blemishes blanketed in what will become hours of my daughters’ joy and my past my past my past unfinished homework and exams not studied for absorbed by wet fluff of six-sided crystals it’s magic time Mama’s time Mama removes false expectations of the adult world created by the adults who used to be children why did you create such a world and how and why why why have you forgotten the world as it was when you were children? You left it and you’re so serious. I left it because I was so serious. Shed your youth your lovely loving youth. I wrote that before because knowledge sets you free. But pain imprisons. But not today not so serious today.

I left the shed and footsteps in the snow headed for the trashcan across the way and wheeled it down the driveway and followed the two black lines it carved into the white back up. The one trashman will hop out of the driver’s seat and around back to throw the bags into the compactor and he’s always careful to return the can in a nice way. Once it rolled forward and the lid flapped open and he turned around and rolled it back and closed it and he didn’t have to do it but that’s how it is around here. And the snowplows came before dawn. And I stepped back into the house in the silent hum of early morning the warm house with sleeping girls and I lit a fire for them to wake to the outside so snowy white the inside fire flickering bright. And I went for a bowl of yogurt A2A2 of course with sunflower seeds and walnuts and raisins and a drizzle of honey. I don’t always drizzle it in honey but I did today. And I think it’s time to crack open enough chestnuts and hickory nuts and black walnuts from the yard and foraged around to fill a container for my yogurt. The bag of store-bought walnuts is nearly finished and why shouldn’t I eat the nuts I picked off my land with my own hands? And my wife woke and fed the cats and dog and we discovered our littlest one the one-year-old had crawled off the mattress on the floor and was snoring on the ground next to the closed door a little sweet wheezing coming through the crack and she is fine she is safe we left her there with our predawn smiles. And my wife went for last year’s snow pants hanging in the closet and we decided yes they’ll fit our three-year-old well enough and the yogurt was gone and bowl placed into the sink and I’m off again through the snow the steely blue snow now that it’s finding the sun and the sky is the same steely blue and in between the blues the black trees are penciled in charcoal. And I think like everything that is good that this is the best moment of the day when it’s quiet and calm and beautiful pregnant with happiness cusping reality like the dawn light on snow and I’ll hold here I’ll hold here I’ll hold here. For just a moment longer.