Waiting on Winter

As we approach mid-December, I am waiting for winter to arrive. It’s been a tempestuous few weeks of health challenges and minor surgery. November has scuttled past in its usual shades of grey and brown as dormancy settles comfortably across the garden beds.

I’m one who enjoys rainy days and notices the icy droplets draped like crystal necklaces across the zigzag twigs of the redbud tree outside the kitchen window. We’ve had twinkling tastes of snow, just enough to fleetingly sugar coat the shrubs before melting away again. This weekend’s flirtation with 60-degree temperatures has ended in the cold diamond hard blue sky of near freezing. And so I wait for snow, hanging on like the last fluffy milkweed seed to hopes of a white Christmas.

I love snow. I love almost everything about it, be it fluffy and shimmering or wet and icy. I wait for the silence of snow blanketing at midnight. I can’t shovel it this year, but as I cut this year’s batch of paper snowflakes, I will be counting delicate bird footprints and tracing the shapes of the iced prairie dock leaves, a steaming mug of tea at the ready.