White Space

Don’t be mad at me, for saying it, but I want snow for Christmas. I don’t care if it doesn’t snow again, but on Christmas day I like the white.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a light coating year round. It covers up a multitude of sins: fills in the places on the shutters where the paint has cracked and peeled; evens out the lumps in the lawn; covers over the un-raked leaves; makes our undulating driveway look like something out of a poem by Frost.

Even squirrels look good in the snow: their tracks are intriguing, mysterious, nothing like the little beasts themselves.

All tracks in the snow, whether from cars or people, deer or dogs, seem to suggest something better passed this way.

Even the rain dripping off the telephone lines, criss-crossing our driveway, leaves tracks in the snow.

And just a light coating of snow softens the world in so many other ways.
Cars crunch by, a bit louder perhaps but sounding very similar to the sound the snow makes when you are rolling up the first scoops of a snowman.

The harsh sounds that we normally make when we speak to one another, just seem to come out of your mouth and lie there, at your feet, when there’s snow.

Even the shape of the world is changed, after just an hour of two of steady snowfall.

One car looks just like another.
Mailboxes wear hats.
The leaves in the gutter look like Frosted Flakes.
Our Weber grill looks like a poached egg waiting for a spoon.

It makes you want to explore areas that, just an hour or two before, you couldn’t be bothered to look at as you passed.

It makes you want to visit friends, who though they live right up the street, you haven’t seen in months. Arriving at someone’s doorstep in the snow, makes you feel as if you are as bright and capricious as the weather.

Some friends are snow friends, aren’t they? There are some people that you can’t imagine visiting, surprising, in the snow. But there are others who seem to be waiting for just such as occasion.

Dan and Sally are just such friends. Friends I always wait too long to see. The last time I visited them was, when the Tiki torches were lit, I think? Or was it the Halloween I dressed up as the ‘Undecided Voter’: that was spooky!

I bet it will snow when they read this column.

Maybe I should just leave the rest of this column blank: leave a little white space.
Maybe if you are quiet, and wait, and watch, this column will begin to fill up with white.
It will be indiscernible at first, filling the margins that are already blank, but then beginning to cover up the words, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, until all that remains showing is the first line: “Don’t be mad at me for saying it, but I want snow for Christmas. I don’t care if it doesn’t snow again, but on Christmas day I like..