the snows had come

The snows had come. Shyly, at first. Large flakes falling quietly in the morn as too the night. The countryside appeared quilted, little sugary ridges finding nooks and panes. There was a quiet to winter and one either embraced it or was driven mad depending on one’s propensity for solitude and the air not spoken. Or, in some houses, the madness was just the opposite, winter having driven folk inside and all their noise with them. Rooms grew smaller and tempers shorter.

Still, there was a warmth to kitchen and den, of stove and fire, coffee and hot chocolate. Lights became important in winter in ways they were never in summer. Lamps, candles and even Christmas lights imparted a measure of comfort against nature, the darkening sky, of endless grey. We never spoke of it in our house, the transient passage of mind and heart through this world just as we never spoke of death at funerals. I suppose this was the sadness. Not winter. Not less hours of daylight. But rather the highlighting of what was not discussed. And the feeling one got, but only later, that we lived in the shallows.