waiting

I sat on the couch with my son this morning, after his father left for school, and at 8:30am I saw the first fat flakes drift silently to the ground. I wasn't wearing my glasses, so only the near ones were visible through the picture window, spaced widely apart. By 9am, the snow was coming down thick and wet, burying the grass only recently exposed by our few sunny days late last week. H. climbed up into the wide black leather chair by the window, and gazed out into the gathering whiteness. I wondered if the winter seemed short or eternal to him -- whether as a young child he is so alive and alert that the moments stretch on dense with layers of experience and potential meaning -- or if he lives so much in the moment that the endless monochrome can be appreciated in each of its daily changing nuances.

I think he's sick of it, actually. He wants to go to the fair, to the zoo; he wants to go trick-or-treating. He wants music class to start up again so he can see Miss Nancy. He wants to spend more time on the swingset. We are waiting -- "in a minute" I say. Or "that happens in the summer, after the snow melts and it gets really hot outside." "We trick-or-treat after your birthday, in the fall." "We can't jump in the leaf piles until your birthday, Skeet." We are waiting for his father's job interview tomorrow, and after that we will wait until a decision is made. We are waiting to find out what will happen to us; and to find out if I need to book an oral surgeon for this face thing. (The swelling is finally going down, after 36 hours of antibiotics.) We are, all of us, sick of waiting. The snow is a reminder that we must go on waiting though, a little longer -- enough to satisfy the requirements of those long, dense moments, like scenes in a movie wherein many things happen at once, from different perspectives -- H. sits in his window seat and watches the snow fall, and later we'll make two trips outside to rebuild the faded snowman and to shovel many inches of slushy, heavy slop. Hopefully they'll plow tonight, so that Ron can drive safely to school and the interview and daycare.

It's beautiful, with the heavily ladden trees and the roofs insulated against the streetlamps. But I'm ready for mud, for mess and birdsong and continuation. For the new leaf.