The Snow is Flying

My kindergartener’s eager voice interrupted the crunch of tires on frozen slush, the hiss of my defrost on full blast, and the squeak of my weary windshield wipers doing their best.

“Momma!! MOMMA!!” she said, “The snow is flying…like PIDGEONS!!!! ….LIKE EAGLES!”

That kiddo’s awe and delight was just right. The wet clumps of snow were ridiculously plump and surreal and feathery all at once. They were absurd and beautiful and magic and I almost missed it in my crabbiness about being out in the cold, grey, world at all, so busy with traffic downtown.

Running errands in the snow will probably never be something I ever look forward to doing.  But, as my oldest child pointed out, the narrow focus on the drudgery of the task at hand I had certainly wasn’t the best way to interpret what was happening around us.  

I remembered this story some 10 years ago, at a writer’s conference, when the author Janet Fitch ensured the group of us that there were, indeed, tiny miracles all around us every day; that we only have to be looking for them.

Somehow children know this without being told.

• Let us be open to our own child-minds, let us pause, maybe once a day, if only for 30 seconds…

• To slow down your breath and attend to the world around you. Have a look, take a listen.

• Discover what snow pigeons are already there, flying under your radar.