Tiny

Prior to an impending storm, one that's been predicted to be large and terrible, the kind that fills the voices of the weatherpeople with urgency as it furrows their brows, I like to turn up the heat, make myself a cup of hot chocolate with just a couple of splashes of peppermint schnapps, pull the blinds and wait until morning to see just how bad it really is. It's my grown-up version of waiting for Santa, although the results are never as rewarding. When morning arrives I'll make my tea, feed the cats, take my shower and wait until Roo is awake and ready to go outside before I pull them open, stand before the windows and marvel at the world outside.

We were told we'd wake in the middle of a blizzard, and as such, half the city closed, including most of the school districts. The wind was supposed to be fierce and terrible and the world was supposed to be a white-out. I dug out my boots and gloves and the little striped knit cap someone bought me for Christmas several years ago, lined them up in front of the door where they would be waiting for me in the morning when Dunc was awake and ready to venture out.

Although the snow is still falling I would hardly call the three or four inches we got overnight anything to write home about (and yet here I am writing about it). The weatherpeople keep adjusting the forecast so now we're being told it's going to continue to snow all day and into the night and that we could still get another four to eight inches. I've been watching this snow, though, and it's wimpy enough that I'm doubting what these weather "experts" are telling us. Most of what I see falling is merely drifting down off my roof. Hell, the parking lot has enormous dry patches in it and the roads are clear. It is cold but not Minnesota or North Dakota cold. Just a regular sort of winter cold. Nothing spectacular and hardly worth mentioning.

All in all I'd say this storm, full of bluster, was about as interesting as CSPAN.

But then I'm not Duncan. I'm not a Golden who takes enormous delight in the tiny dancing sparkles catching the feeble afternoon sun as they drift around his head or getting kicked up by my boots. I don't enjoy running head first into the stuff, spinning around, flinging myself into the air and snapping at the froth of my wake like he does. He rolls and plays and pushes his belly into it and burrows down so that his snout is buried, forgetting the rest of his head is visible, a red, fuzzy lump in a sea of white. He can't contain himself and seems immune to the cold and wet of it, actually seems to relish those thing, and could spend hours playing, springing back and forth across the hill, running circles among the trees, standing under the low pine boughs and blinking into the crystal dust that drifts down on his long eyelashes and waiting pink tongue. While I am never warm in the snow, I am warmed by the pleasure it brings him, his infinite appreciation for it, his gratitude for all things, especially those I work so hard to avoid. It is his experience that enriches my own, and as I watch him blink away the snow that falls on his eyes, mine are opened to the wonder of it, and I love it because he does, and it will always make think of him.

Bless his tremendous joy. There is nothing tiny about it.