Mother nature cornered the irony market this morning. A few weeks before the official start of spring, she decided to send us a blanket a snow. A March snow in Vermont is expected, but this winter has been marked primarily by grey days and an extended mud season. That combination has been no help in lifting me out of a persistent funk.
So when I woke up this morning and saw bleak gray sky through the sliver opening in the curtains, I was ready for more of the same. Then I got up and peeked through the curtain and my breath stopped.
It was still snowing. There wasn’t much of it, but it was already one of the best snows all year. It was sugar powder perfect, and the wind hadn’t yet stripped the trees of their raiments. The voice in my head that controls worry started whispering then.
“The roads will be terrible. It’ll be a snow day for sure,” she said. That got me breathing again as I remembered I needed to check school closings. I was already seeing a morning of work interspersed with refereeing, but when I checked, only the older child’s school was even delayed. Knowing he had homework to occupy him while I worked, and knowing there would be no fights over remotes or electronica, I decided this really was the best snow of the year.
There was just enough to camouflage the mud. There was too little to cancel school, and somewhere in the back of my brain, I was pretty sure I could hear another voice humming opening bars of ‘We Need a Little Christmas.’