I took the woman’s bathmat with me to the hardware store this...

I took the woman’s bathmat with me to the hardware store this morning. She wanted the walls to match the light purple color of the mat. The guy who helped me paused from unloading sacks of salt and told me he’d never been in a blizzard before while we waited for the paint – Lavender Ice – to mix.

I’m waiting for paint to dry right now in this woman’s cluttered home. There are eight pieces of furniture meant for sitting in the room I’m in, and no place to actually sit. Chairs and sofas are occupied by heaps of pillows, a collection of stuffed animals, fire irons, framed art of colorful amoebic shapes and underwater scenes. I’m sitting on the floor.

I like the energy of a coming storm, in the air, in the people, the shared inconvenience and exhilaration of a Snow Day. Talk of blankets, books, safety, eggs and milk. It’s nice to consider as I paint bathroom walls and look out the window at the small flakes already falling. “Bombogenesis is my new favorite word!” my mom exclaimed in an email this morning, the rapid intensification of a storm.  

Of the world being altered by snow, Gaston Bachelard wrote: “As the result of this universal whiteness, we feel a form of cosmic negation in action. The dreamer of houses knows and senses this, and because of the diminished quality of the outside world, experiences all the qualities of intimacy with increased intensity.”

The increased intensity of intimacy. That’s what’s there to be enjoyed these next snowy days in the northeast.