The world happens to all of us

The sound of rain on snow.

It's not a sound I grew up with. That's what I hear tonight when I slide open the glass doors that open on to our back patio.

This is what happens after a snow event in the Pacific Northwest, though. There is no gradual melt, no tapering off for weeks or months. The temperature drops, the snow falls. And then it warms, and the snow slides from the bent branches, cascades on to the sidewalks. Trees shake free of their burdens. It's an eerie mess for awhile, and a noisy one: trickling, gushing, dripping. Tires spin through slush in the streets, and then everything is just wet. I know what's coming.

But it's been beautiful, if unmooring.

Tomorrow will be our fourth snow day, officially. I've only taught one full day so far this month. Last week we had two snow days, followed by a late start and an early release in the same day. Thursday was normal, but only as normal as a day following a semester break and two snow days and a day of twenty-three minute classes can be. On Thursday night, we received word that Friday would be an early release so we could get home ahead of the snow that was scheduled to fall. I thought it was overkill, at first; I have so much to get through in my classes, and the snow days set me back quite a bit. But by the time I pulled out of the parking lot and headed across town to collect my own children, the snow had started to fall again. At home I curled up on the couch with a book and my children crowded in next to me, their faces looking towards the sky. I couldn't help myself: I snapped a picture, trying to capture their pure wonder.

The snow fell all throughout the afternoon. My husband peeled potatoes and went out for a run in the snow. I put a chicken in the oven to roast. He'd gone out the night before for a few odds and ends -- hot cocoa, toothpaste, popcorn. We'd stocked up on groceries earlier in the week, picking up milk and bread and the chicken for Friday night's dinner. Plenty of chocolate and wine and coffee and whatever else looked good at Trader Joe's. The macaroni and cheese the kids like. Staples like coconut milk and chickpeas. More potatoes. This proved to be a good idea, because the shelves were nearly empty. We laughed a bit -- how long did folks think they'd be stranded? But then, we used to be self-righteous and vaguely smug assholes in our twenties who laughed at Seattleites in the snow, too. And then we understood what it means to drive in snow and ice here. We stopped laughing.

Last week, I had a moment where I clutched my head and grew a little weepy: getting my students through their IB assessments this semester requires a tightly planned schedule, and I am a planner, and the snow threw a wrench in all of that. (As of this writing, the wrench is still there. My inbox is filled with students' panic.) But then I was reminded that the world happens to all of us, and possibly this is one of those infuriating situations in which I can practice the patience I find myself so desperately praying for.

(I need to stop praying for patience, I guess. I get it; I won't be sent a gift-wrapped box. I'll be gifted with opportunities to practice. Blah blah blah.)

On Friday night, late, sort of, maybe just past ten, I opened the front door to watch the snow. It fell in soft, fat flakes. The driveway was covered, even though Matt went out to shovel before dinner. He only went out to shovel so he could pile the snow in a huge mound, a head start on a snow cave he and the kids finished in the morning.

I stood in the doorway and watched the flakes fall for awhile. And then I stepped outside, in my sweatshirt and slippers. It felt so soft -- so soft it was hardly even cold. My neighborhood is so quiet. I walked across the driveway, my slippers sinking into the snow. I walked into the street. And I stood there, in that unblemished snow where no cars had driven all evening, and I just stretched out my arms and breathed and smiled because it was so, so lovely, the sky soft and bright and silent. And then the door opened, and there was my daughter, framed in the light from the living room.

"Mom? What are you doing?"

And then suddenly she was bounding across the lawn with her impossibly long legs, and the two of us were running back and forth in the street, giggling. We ran around the corner to the cul-de-sac and stood in the glow of a street lamp, gazing up to watch the snowflakes falling brightly above our heads, so slowly they seemed suspended in the air. The sky was full of snow, and so were my slippers, and the bottoms of my pajama pants were wet. I didn't care.