March 02, 2006

Early light

One of the most difficult things about winter is the way that darkness begins early in the evening and then lingers past the ringing of our alarm clock. It is hard to climb out of a warm bed into the cold dark, the window panes acting like mirrors that show a grouchy woman tripping over cats who swarm about her ankles, demanding to be fed. During the middle of the winter, we eat breakfast in the dark, and it is still dark when With-a-Why walks out to the school bus.

When I was a kid, I hated waiting for the school bus in the dark and cold, my legs getting numb as the wind hurled snow at legs protected only by green kneesocks. I didn’t like the rush of cars going past in the slush, the glare of their headlights making it impossible to see if the people in them were neighbors I knew or strangers who might stop and say something weird to me.

My children do not walk very far to get the school bus, and they have reflective strips on their coats and backpacks so that the stray car that comes down this country road can see them. But still, it is a relief when the days get longer. Today I noticed that when With-a-Why walked out to wait for the school bus, the front yard was filled with blue light, sunshine highlighting snow on the tree branches, morning sunshine just ready to pour into the yard and melt the snow. Another sign that we are moving toward spring.

waitingforbus

18 comments:

BrightStar (B*) said...

This is an amazing photo! I can see the reflective strip. :)

Coffee-Drinking Woman said...

Isn't that early early morning light beautiful?

Yankee, Transferred said...

Such a beautiful photograph, jo(e) and how you bring me right.there. when you write. I love coming by here.

halloweenlover said...

HURRAY for longer days! Thank goodness. Toward the end of February, I started to wonder if I might just lose my mind.

I love the picture. Morning light is so special.

listie said...

Great picture; and, have you noticed how the birds are singing?

Anonymous said...

Thank god.

Just a few more weeks, just a few more weeks....

Anonymous said...

Oh, this is such a gorgeous picture. And yet again, serves to make me COMPLETELY jealous of your wonderful northern setting. I miss snow! I miss morning sunlight on snow!

(okay, the south has its own prettiness - the sun gleaming on magnolia trees is pretty great - and it's supposed be 70 today. But it's just not the same!)

Rana said...

Beautiful picture!

I have been printing out calendars with the sunrise times on them, waiting for the days when I don't have to wake up in the dark. (Like this morning, when I woke from a weird dream involving muddy boots, shopping, women in suits, a Lincoln Continental, and French colonialism. Ee.)

I've long thought that I love mornings - the light, the still peace of the air, the birds singing - but I really don't like having to get up out of bed in order to see them.

Phantom Scribbler said...

What a lovely, lonely picture.

ccw said...

A beautiful picture!

Anonymous said...

If only pictures could also smell... I miss the smell of the sun and snow.

Anonymous said...

Brrr!

At least your kids will have photographic proof that they trudged a number of feet to school in the snow...

Mona Buonanotte said...

Y'know what would be cool? If you made a shack/hut/teepee for him at the end of the driveway...something he could snuggle in and bound out of when the bus got there. (This is all projection, I always wanted one as a kid, and all I got was shivering under the maple tree in the front yard.)

Jennifer said...

I love that photo. Every time I see one of your snow photos, I still find it hard to believe that real people live in such a (to me) foreign environment.

I'm happy it's March, because now our horrible heat and humidity is coming to an end, and we'll get crisp clear beautiful mid 70s days with cool nights.

zelda1 said...

What a lovely picture. We never get much snow, and when we do, they cancel school. If we had that much, they would close down the town. How cool. Your children are very lucky. I raised my two in the desert, because I love the desert. There is just something about the sparse. Like, brown and dark dark green, and then a beautiful flower will bloom and it comes from a cactus or a ground plant and then those colors are magnified and become the most beautiful thing in the world at that very moment. But later, we moved here, to the hills of Arkansas where flowers grow so wild and are so plentiful. Snow, that is what I want in my next great move. Maybe when I graduate graduate school, I will get a job in a snow filled land, maybe even Alaska.

jo(e) said...

Mona: You do see those shacks at the ends of driveways out here. I don't know how cosy they are -- the kids standing in them still look cold to me.

Our driveway isn't that long though -- this photo is taken from my bedroom window. And we live on a deadend so we can wait until the bus goes by, and then With-a-Why walks out while the bus is turning around and the bus picks him up on its way out.

Jody Harrington said...

Beautiful! It brought back memories of the only time I ever lived with lots of snow--when I was in college in upstate New York.

Sarah Sometimes said...

what a very sweet picture...