black and white and shades of grey

[jarissa]

Here in Madison, Alabama, we're getting our share of the Early January Snowpocalypse:  flakes began to fall sometime after four thirty in the morning, before seven thirty.  Probably very shortly before seven thirty, judging by the speckles on my neighbor's roof.

The snow is still very beautiful, and will continue to be all day long -- and tomorrow, if the sun doesn't melt it; we're forecast to not get above freezing for a couple of days.

I miss snow in the winter.  When my sister was born, we lived in southern Indiana, and had snow every winter; having been born in Maine, I had a vague comprehension already that this was part of the natural order, and by the time we moved to southern California -- where it never so much as got cold enough for sweaters, much less snowsuits -- Heather had just started to gather the same comprehension.  We moved when she was a little over a year old, driving from winter to California sunshine.  A bit more than four long years later, we spent the late summer travelling across the northern US and southern Canada to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which has an awful lot of slush effect thanks to the ocean but -- still -- snow.

One of the most spiritual moments of my teenagerhood was spent looking out into a world filled with no light pollution, but a full moon over a tree-ringed expanse of pristine snow.

I don't miss slush, mind, or runny noses, or foggy contacts.  Winter would be perfect if we could just do without the melting part, and skip straight ahead into breezy spring at the appointed time.

So, for the winter of 2009 to 2010, we're now officially up to two real snowfalls.  The first was in early December, exactly a month and two days ago:


I was delighted with it all, Marco was intrigued, Burch was fascinated, and eventually they realized they were freezing enough to quit insisting that I let them stay out in it (and start insisting that I carry them back inside).
The first time they saw snow was back in February of 2006.  Marco, named for his explorer nature, v-e-r-y cautiously followed me a few steps out the back door onto that same porch, while Burch sniffed things at superspeed and watched to see whether any traps sprang upon his braver, month-and-a-half older brother.  Mifune, who'd probably been born around June 22 of 2005, was willing to watch from a safe distance, but has NO interest in stepping outside -- especially into that uncomfortable stuff!

Burch might be willing to go outside with me for a few minutes, during this January snowfall.  If I hold him the entire time.  And if someone else braves it first.  That last condition may be hard to fulfill:  Marco is gone.
We didn't know, when this picture was taken, that Marco had liver cancer.
The kind that, normally, only dogs get.
The aggressive kind.
And, willpower-fueled cat that he's always been, he kept everything functioning -- including his liver -- until everything stopped, on December 30th.

In the last snowfall, Marco looked outside to see why I was dancing around the front yard, in the night, at two in the morning.  He realized it was snow, and started yelling at me to let him out too!:  Marco, who hates being leashed and brought out the front door because it usually means "car trips", called my name imperiously at the top of his lungs until I came back to the door, picked him up and tucked him into the front of my coat, his breastbone against mine, and went back out into the front yard to dance again.  And then wrap him in my scarf, and collect Burch from his bed, and step out into the back yard, and let them both on the table to squeeze the snow in their toes and taste it as it falls from the sky.

He's not here to take joy in winter with me.
But the snow is still beautiful....