Down the street,a snowblower strains, huffing with a...

Down the street,
a snowblower strains, huffing with a machine-gun growl through snow heavied by
rain. Earlier, the wind blew hard, pushing clumps of snow off branches. The
clumps separated on their fall and were absorbed into the snow below in thwumps
I couldn’t hear. I have been daylong alone watching weather move and wondering
what it is about a snowstorm that makes one feel altered, elevated. The quality
of silence changes. The quality of light. A stilling and a newing. That the
world we live, the streets out our windows, can change in the span of a few
hours in a morning, it gentles us, and opens us.

Now, the smell
of gasoline from the snowblower drifts through the windows and brings my mind
to my mother mowing the lawn when we were small. I’ve never pushed a mower, but
I think I’d like it, an appeal in those simple see-your-results tasks. And I
can picture her after pushing the mower around our yard sitting at the kitchen
table, sweating, drinking a Rolling Rock, the wet, sweet smell of cut grass in
the air.

The seasons are
right now confused. In this in-between time, winter-spring, a
neither-here-nor-thereness, and it makes an ache. A simultaneous latch to what
was and anticipation to what might come. The seasons stumble. They flail –
seventy degrees one week; snowstorm the next. Each day’s weather asks: what way
to be? What way to be? The purple tips of crocuses press through mulch. In the
mornings: light and birds. Mourning doves, cardinals, and the robins are back
now, too. Seven fat ones jostled at the end of a driveway yesterday. An albino
squirrel lives nearby and I see it sometimes on early walks, white like the
Full Worm Moon two nights ago. Seeing it seems like a sign. But I don’t know
for what.