Wet Winter Blues

It's winter. Although it's still early upon us this year, its weight is already overwhelming, intolerable. The darkness that forces your spirit to crouch low inside of you. The wind that pricks your skin even through layers of coat and sweatshirt and undershirt. The numb, burning fingers.
I wake up, and it's cold. Pulling my Jim McMahon comforter down, I breathe out expecting to see a plume of ice smoke. Dark silver light lilts through the window, suggesting that snow may have fallen overnight. I've been waiting for snow. Waiting for a chance for school to be canceled, to stay home, bundled in a blanket playing Double Dribble and reading something warm like Island of the Blue Dolphins.

I slither out of bed, preserving the last traces of bed heat as long as I can. Pulling up the hood of my sweatshirt and cinching it tight to frame my face, I steal down the trailer's narrow paneled hallway. Emerging into the linoleum-floored kitchen, I can glance snow out the window. Snow has fallen, but how much is the question.

Whisper-quiet, I tiptoe through the living room to peek out the front door where I have an excellent view of the schoolyard and the schoolhouse across the street. There is snow. Lots of it. The street remains unplowed. It is shin high in pillow cotton, and the muted darkness casts a silver pall over the morning landscape. I can't wait to return to bed and turn on my radio to hear the dj's thick silvery voice say those magic words: "School Cancellations" and then "PORTA School District #202."

I turn in my socked feet to return to bed. Step, step, and suddenly my foot is ice cold and dripping wet. The dog! She's peed on the carpet again. Doing my best to balance on one foot, I yank the wet sock off and carry it with me to the bathroom. I wring it out in the toilet bowl, give it a flush, and toss the sock in the hamper. I wash my hands and return to the bed.

I climb into bed with one sock on, noticing that the warmth I'd left behind has tiptoed away somewhere while I was gone. My radio is strapped to the headboard of my aging hand-me-down bed with two holey tube socks. I flip it to FM and listen through the last minutes of George Thorogood and the Destroyers' "Bad to the Bone" in anticipation of the cancellation announcement.

I'm asleep before it comes.