For reasons that pass beyond understanding, I set my alarm clock last night.
The trilling of the clock at six came as an unwelcome interruption to sleep on a Saturday. The damage was done, however, and I went downstairs and put on a pot of coffee.
At 6:30, the snow had not yet begun. A cold drizzle fell from the sky, and the cat sat huddled on the back step. I let him in, put him downstairs. The cat likes to nuzzle feet as one walks, only this morning he bit me in a toe. Naturally, it was the toe on the left foot that was in such pain yesterday. I gave him some food, then fixed a coffee concoction to get the day going.
Somewhere around seven the snow began to fall.
Snow has been steady. The snow on the holly tree outside the office window upstairs looks festive.
My grandmother has sat in the kitchen all morning, watching the snow. Her coffee has long since gone cold, and a half-eaten piece of toast is in front of her.
I’ve had to close the kitchen door several times; she keeps opening it, to watch through the screen door as the snow falls.
She speaks aloud. About the snow. About trucks or cars driving down the road. There’s no one there to hear her, and her sentences aren’t conversation pieces; like Austin Powers, she has lost her inner monologue, giving voice to her inner thoughts. I wonder if she’s even aware of doing that.
The forecast calls for an inch of snow, give or take. We’ve had snow before — about a month ago, I woke to snow on a Sunday morning — but this is the first accumulation of the season.