Breath of winter

It's been a week of change and transition. On Monday, my daughter flew to European City Where Cell Phones are called Mobiles and began her semester there. Boy in Black went back to college. Shaggy Hair Boy turned sixteen, old enough to drive a car. Neighbor Guy's father died last weekend. Poet Woman's mother died Tuesday morning. My semester began, with students arriving back on campus the same day that winter returned, with snow and ice and chilly winds.

Through this week, I've had a bad cold. Even as my body and mind have tried to adjust to the changes around me, I've felt mostly like I was underwater, caught by currents I didn't understand and moving slowly while things around me floated away. This morning, I woke up with my head clear for the first time in days. A storm had dumped six inches of snow during the night, so I put on my coat and took a walk in my woods, which had been transformed. The muddy ground had frozen and disappeared beneath glistening white, and above my head, tree branches held bits of snow up against sky.