Snow Days

It is beautiful to look at. The air is crisp and clear. The sun is shining through the office window all the brighter for bouncing off the dusting of snow. Despite the dusting of snow, the sun lets me know that spring is coming. It was harder to believe in that spring yesterday. The wind howled, the power went out in desperately cold weather leaving everything cold and alone. It felt as if the very centre of the earth had grown icy.

Although it has not been an especially hard winter, there have been chest infections--the classic "just a cold, but" that has landed on people with a particular virulence. It seems to have hit some older people particularly hard. And pneumonia is a concern up here to cattle and people alike.

So while I was basking in the warm sun and being grateful to be home out of the snow that has closed the road that we passed last night just one step ahead of the snow, I felt secure, productive. I was working on projects long past due. I don't know what prompted me to check email. Just one of those feelings.

The father of a friend passed away somewhere/when in that slurry of snow and cold. It was brief and, my friend assures me--not uncomfortable, for which of course I can be glad, but this man was a friend of mine, too, so I grieve for his wife and family and for my friend and for me, too. Although I feel guilty about presuming myself into his life on such short acquaintance, nonetheless, I feel his absence.

One of the many gifts of my life in this new country is the welcome I have received from ordinary people in ordinary places. People who had no reason to know me welcomed me into their kitchens or living rooms and then offered me not only coffee or tea (or sometimes a dram) but also their stories, their recollections--none of which were ordinary.