Mothers and Daughters

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Snow.

She heard the shovels scraping on the campus walks when it was still dark, and she sat bolt upright in bed and thought Snow! and then almost called out in excitement to the bed across the dormitory room until she remembered Diane had changed rooms and the bed was empty. The word snow rushed into her mind again, and she threw back the covers and rushed to the window. The floor was cold. She hopped from foot to slipperless foot as she wiped the window clear of condensation and peered out over the campus. Snow, and it was still falling, whispering, hushed. Snow, and the university lights were almost obscured in a dizzy swirl of white. A sudden gladness clutched at her heart, squeezing an unconscious grin onto her face.

“Oh, good, it’s snowing!” she said aloud, and she ran back to her bed and pulled the quilt to her chin and crossed her arms over her breasts and lay in the darkness smiling, thinking of Minnesota and the woods, and walking behind her father and her sister when they went out to cut down the tree for Christmas, the air so cold you could break it off and hear it tinkle in your fist, the snow thick and silent underfoot except for the steady squeaking crunch of her father’s boots. She lay in bed with the smile on her face, and she could not sleep. She thought of the way the snow would bank high against the kitchen door behind the rectory, and the tight snug snowed-in feeling of the house at evening prayers, the fire blazing high in the stone fireplace, the smell of pitch, the crackling spit of new wood; she could not sleep. Dawn broke against her window in silent grayness, sunlessly.

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