Landscape in shades of white and brown

White, dark white outside with the faintest shadows of tree trunks fading off into the distance. Although the snow is coming down sideways, pine boughs whipping in the wind, there's an eerie muffled silence -- no cars, no planes, just the clackety clack of this keyboard and the insistent whispers of words in my head.

As Dad said, "a nice day to just sit by the fire and watch the snow fall outside."

Part of me agrees -- the part that took the dog for a walk this morning just so I could come back inside and take off my boots and wipe off my foggy glasses and heat up a cup of hot cocoa and nestle in -- the part that wants to say that winter is so delightful because the cold reminds you to be happy for warmth. Then part of me argues -- the part of me that says ahh, but it's only so pleasant because you know you have enough wood, enough chocolate, enough time to come in out of the storm, to be comfortable. My fingers are cold, out here in this room away from the stove, sitting in this midday darkness, where's the sun? I've been away from the warmth for too long and will tire of the season before it begins.

Dad just came in from snowblowing the driveway, has brushed the blizzard from his coat, is poking at the fire, unloading logs he'd spent so much time piling up. The work that went into those, even with all sorts of tools -- dragging the fallen trees from the woods to the yard, cutting them into manageable sections, then splitting them one by one, wheelbarrowing them over to the pile then neatly stacking them in an orderly cross-cross-layer patterns, the rhythm, the monotony, the backache, the tendon strain, just so we can toss them in and watch them burn. While he was doing all of that work, was he thinking of a day like this, knowing that he would be able to enjoy a day of sitting by the fire and watching the snow fall outside? I didn't do anything to earn this warmth, to earn the hot cocoa and the puppy and this view of white white white wind. Brown eyes, cold.