Snow Day
5:00 am
I wake up, look out the window. A couple of inches on the ground, but no snow falling. I check my phone for news from work – too early. I watch some of a French film I had no intention of ever seeing that Hulu has decided somehow follows from the screwball comedy I put on before falling asleep. The plot makes no sense picked up in the middle, a single mother with a son named Vasily, her best friend and his lover, her eccentric mother. I turn off my computer and doze before my alarm goes off at 6:40.
6:30 am
A text from my boss, requesting I respond to the message. My co-workers chime in. I send a half-hearted joke and hope I’m not caught in the feedback loop of responses, counter-jokes, someone bringing up a new subject just when it’s died down. Energized by the thought of a day off, there’s no hope of sleeping in now. I drain a glass of water, put on my robe and step outside. Sleet is falling too fine to sense at first and the air is still with a tang like steel on the tongue. Not even the tracks of animals over the first snow.
I go back in to make coffee, thinking about breakfast and that I shouldn’t have sneered at the crowds at the grocery store lining up with loaves of bread and gallons of milk. Only an almost certainly molded english muffin to go with my eggs. I decide Proust suits the weather and take Swann’s Way from the shelf to read with my coffee. The cat comes to idle on my belly and I make small adjustments as she shifts, laying on the book, reaching out a lazy paw that manages to scoop under my glasses and pull them away from my face. From time to time I look out the window. Snow is coming down hard now, first very fine, then in large, gliding flakes, the wind taking shape in the angle of its falling.
9:00 am
Tired of Proust going on about his terror of going to sleep without kissing his mother goodnight and feeling restless I go outside again to gauge the depth of the snow. It looks like 6 inches already, piled nearly half way up my tires and already clinging perilously to the roof of the shed. I take a picture and send it to my dad. Two inches and falling fast in Greensboro he says. Time to start the day. A truck eases up the road past the drive.
10:51 am
I tidy up my room, do the dishes and start a small load of laundry because my only long underwear are dirty. The last english muffin has become a petri dish, so I steal a slice of my roommate’s bread, and some of his butter for a breakfast of toast, scrambled eggs, leftover pork and beans and a second cup of coffee. While I cook I’m constantly looking out the kitchen window, watching the snow slacken for awhile and the wind pick up. A pine branch is lightened of its burden in an explosion of powder. Everywhere limbs are drooping and any surface becomes a caricature of itself, improbable wedding cakes scattered in the yard.
I eat, and put the clothes in the dryer, guessing they’ll be done by the time I shower. I wonder why there are settings for “more dry” and “less dry” – a yes or no proposition, there should only be “dry”, unless someone is aiming for damp clothes. I’ve been watching too much Seinfeld. I go in my room to get undressed and the dog is laying on my bed, staring out the window.
12:33 pm
I like that mine are the first prints in the snow. Walking down the drive each step sinks to mid calf and I go high stepping down to the road – pulling my knees up to clear the top of my last footprint, plunging my foot down through another 8 inches. The road is slushy but manageable, and a few cars pass, tires sighing through the snow. Sleet and snow ping constantly against my coat front and hat and the wind quickly has my nose running. Down the hill, the M&J is closed so it’s another half mile down to the BP, stepping off into the deep snow on the roadside to let trucks pass and fling sludge against my legs if I stay too close.
The cashier is pissed he’s at work. He grunts when I say hello, shakes his head when I come to the register with only 2 tall boys. I’m not drinking them now, asshole.
The way home is all up hill and halfway I’m opening my coat, taking heavy-legged steps, breathing hard. When I turn back into the drive, the dogs are careening around the yard, flinging powder up behind them, running at an angle to the ground that makes it seem they’ll fall over. Russ is out with them, and I come huffing and stomping into the house. We talk about the weather.
2:03 pm
It’s still coming down hard, and we decide there’s nothing for it but to drink beer and watch The Wire, then once inevitably tipsy to make obscene snowmen. Now that someone else is up, the day is no longer just mine. Once in awhile, I’ll go out, to watch my footprints become shallow cups and listen for birdsong sounding the day’s distance through the still-falling snow like static over the world, a signal fading in and out, rustling, rustling.
