When we found out the kids’ school was cancelled for snow I made them stay up with me until midnight (Dawn was gone), they both fell asleep on the sofa, we’d been out in the storm past 10 and the sky had turned pink-gray, the trees looked ominous, lifelike, arms swollen white. In the morning, I’d gotten about five hours’ sleep and was in my robe and striped socks with my coffee when the guys across the street emerged with axes and chainsaws up and down the road collecting tree branches, busying themselves with all the tasks I knew I should, a tree down in our driveway, everything on its side and collapsed under wet snow…the discord of it, of nature smiting everything out by just a matter of degrees…no internet, no school or work…we walked to the store for a bottle of wine and a bag of chips, they said 32 people had called off…and all the trees looked flocked and gloppy with wet snow, it shook in idealized vignettes from each window: a large tree branch did a karate chop right down the middle of the net on our sports court, I dragged the wood to the fire pit and burned it, and across the street the guys who rent were out with their Datsun pick-up truck and motor bikes, and built a bonfire of their own of pagan scale, and I dragged an old Christmas tree across the road to contribute to it, and they had Miller Lite tall boys and Ginger crossed the Invisible Fence threshold snapping at the snow, galloping: Charlotte and Lily’s cheeks dotted pink, watching them from the den on the sofa with a glass of wine late afternoon, thinking how deeply I love them, no camera can capture it.

Categories: musings, parenting

Tags: pacific northwest, parenting, prose, Seattle, William Pearse writer