Happy

The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

There is something about the sound of snow––the first real snow of the season––that, despite the change in temperature and the bland whitewash of the world, that seems to make it alright. It is a crisp sound, not quite musical so much as rhythmic, a delicate whisper as it alights on brittle, yellow leaves or sidewalks where only a few days before ants scuttled back and forth in their blind way, their evening shadows long and dark on the sunset gold pavement. It is a sound I have learned to love these past eight years on my walks with Duncan.

I did not want to go out. It took all my energy to get dressed this morning, to pull on my coat and mittens and take Duncan out into it. But he was sitting in the window watching it come down, his tail twitching anxiously, a very soft whine in his throat. He didn't want to miss a moment of it. So I knelt down beside him, put my arm across his shoulder and leaned in close to his ear. "I have never liked winter," I told him. "You can ask anyone who knows Papa and they will tell you I have always favored Spring, but winter is beautiful when you're out in it and I can't help but smile when you make snow angels. So we'll go outside and we'll both be happy together."

And we were.