The tight rectangles of the block’s back yards fill up, little white serving-dishes of snow. Trees catch it. Even the slim surfaces of chain-link hexagons catch it.
The baby’s sleeping again. She had her shots this morning. Yelled less than I thought she would, just looked astounded, and made two fat tears. Fell asleep fast when we got home, after walking down 7th Avenue inside my coat. Her view: a triangle of sky with snow inside. Every so often a flake would land on her face and melt, leaving a tiny water dome. She looked around intently and made no sound.
It’s taken me 10 years to love snow in the city. It used to just make me homesick for Minnesota fields. Corn stubble poking though drifts in parallel rows, crows on the wire with heads tucked under sleek black wings. A length of pasture to walk beside, long ditches extravagantly drifted. The sound of nothing, standing still between white sky and white ground.
I am raising a city baby. Will she be scared of the quiet, when we go visiting? I want to give her the smell of alfalfa and the moist breath of cows and the quiet of falling snow falling on snow already fallen.
yes, she should have those delicious things, so essential to part of what's made you so wonderful. So lacking in childrens lives now it seems! i feel so lucky to have had a forest for my back yard, and long summer camping trips. She have those things you mention. And best of all, she has YOU.
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