winter

 

It wasn’t supposed to snow.

It was supposed to be like November and December—winter months pretending to be spring, with forty-degree-sunshine days and muddy fields and the smell of soggy grass. It was a little odd to have a summery Christmas, but I was too busy to complain, and I just assumed the warm trend would continue till May.

But not so. February wants to be the last week of December. There’s a blizzard in the gorge, twenty-car collisions on the I-5 corridor. Schools are closing in the middle of the day, sending kids back home to white-painted houses hunkered against single-digit cold. Winter slept late, but it’s waking now.