{life after snow}

About halfway through February, every year, I forget.

I forget about above-zero and outdoor music festivals and ice cream on cathedral steps and food carts on the plaza and sandal tans and colours. I look at the sky and it's grey and I look at the ground and it's white. I forget that there are other colours that outside can be.

So I sit by the window and glare at the clouds as though they are snowing just to spite me. I forget that clouds are only floating masses of condensed water vapour and typically do nothing out of malevolence. I forget that I am way too insignificant for clouds to care about my feelings even if they could.

"Yesterday," I muse, "it was winter. Today, it is winter. Tomorrow, it will be winter." I forget that seasons are like bike tires and that spring is actually going to come around again.

It is. It has to. At least, it did last year, I think.

But I can't remember for sure. Is there ever going to be anything other than huddling under blankets and cars that won't start and roads so slick you could skate to the grocery store? I look out the window. So much snow. I'm not sure there hasn't always been this much snow.

But on Monday, the sun came out a little. (I like to think that the sun has a soft spot for me, infinitesimal though I may be.) The clouds went off to bother someone else and the temperatures skyrocketed to zero and it was warm enough to leave the house with your coat unbuttoned. So I made a point of it.

Barclay and I bundled Sullivan up and took him on his First Ever Walk to The Naked Bean, our favourite little coffee shop down the street. He slept through the whole thing and the shop was closed because it was a holiday.
But the point is not that. The point is that it just felt so good to get out and that the simple act of walking down the street without getting frostbitten jogged my memory enough to maybe get me through till April.

There is life after snow.