Snow Days

The gentle chirp of the alarm clock stirs me from my nightly death to my morning rebirth.

The warmth of the bed temporarily imprisoning as the caterpillar is held captive within its cocoon until it emerges as a transformed butterfly though I leave my blanket-built cocoon the same recognizable figure that voluntarily entered the night before.

The sun has not yet risen, but the screen glows casting its light around the room as the day’s news, sports and weather reports begin.

Moving gingerly across the screen’s bottom blue band is the information I seek. To some it is the “school closings” while to me it is “who gets to sleep in”.

I float away for a moment remembering the snow days of my youth spent at home building snowmen and then warming with hot red tomato soup into which crumbled saltine crackers would float while the rouge of the once vine hanging vegetables was absorbed and brittle broken pieces were transformed into a soggy pulp.

I return to wonder if the coming snow will be in the rainbow colors of the radar scan or will simply be the standard blowing pure white powder that will eventually transform to gray-brown. I know the answer.

The appointed snow start is delayed as the storm moves more slowly than anticipated much as does life. When finally it arrives, the albino mosquito-like flakes entice and entrance without warning of their larger relatives who will soon arrive for an extended visit.

The naked earth starts to transform as the multi-size flakes flying downward, upward and sideward all at once finally land to velcro themselves to their already grounded neighbors creating an unbroken covering that deepens layer by layer.

What was once brown on brown now is white on white on white.

But life must move on, perhaps forward, perhaps in a circle, perhaps downward, upward and sideward all at once, and so the bonded flakes must be separated into groups a flung through the air into new piles. As the clumps of snow take man-made flight, a pure white mist fills the air often falling back onto the moving force or the area from which it came.

The snow continues to fall, the pushing, shoving, throwing and flinging continues to move the white blanket to new locations, but a thin white layer always remains . . . for now.

And my cocoon bed remains and awaits my entry into my nightly death during which I will journey, with today’s new layer of life, forward to my morning rebirth.

My circle of life.