Love Letter to the Snowstorm

My dear enormous snowstorm--

All winter I have been waiting for you, but only your icy sisters have visited, and they are difficult guests--slippery of tongue and foot, a pretense of volubility and thaw but, in truth, a perpetual and wearisome impenetrability. Even the cat slides down the hill.

Of course you, too, will be nothing but trouble. The electrical lines will whimper, and the town plow will, once again, toss our mailbox into the ditch. But you will be a joyous trouble, concealing your sisters' tracks, concealing everything under your optimism. White, you will sigh against the window, is more beautiful than green, and you will lure me to wade into the woods, and I will stand very still under the trees as the north wind shakes up its featherbeds and you swirl and sing among the gusts.

And then, when I wade back to the house, and light the candles you require, and move all the refrigerated items onto the porch to stay cold, and melt snow to wash dishes or flush the toilet, and then pour wine or hot tea and stand at the window, watching the day fade behind you, I will be so happy. I will think, What more do I need on earth?--what more than this circle of warmth, the scent of minestrone on the stove, enough to share with any lost traveler who stumbles into the lamplight of this way station in the forest. No one will stumble in, of course. But dear enormous snowstorm, you will allow such a fairy tale to shimmer, and I will love to live in your story.

Your friend,

Dawn

P.S. If you make me drive in you, I will hate you with all the hate in my heart.