Thoughts from the Snowbound

My family likes to really be together on the holidays, meaning all of us under one roof. Hence on December 26th at 9am, with that half-eaten cookie right where Santa left it, we rushed to our cars and drove together to the country place we come to in summer. Here, the great Last Gasp Blizzard of 2010 found us and has kept us pinned down ever since, in the same sort of suspense I used to feel when the neighborhood big kids would sit astride me to lower long strings of spit over my small face, then suck them back up again at the last possible second.Things felt pretty dicey by last night all right as the milk and butter sank away and the Pampers ran out; as the lights flickered and one us began shaking with fever  like this little oak leaf you see in the photo, which I have watched these past few days shivering in the bitter 50 mile-an-hour gusts.But last night at 11 the plow finally showed and now here comes this blazing sun so it looks like Pampers for all , and milk, and eggs, and a fever now seemingly lifted so we  that with easy minds we might return to those board games and jigsaws - and maybe even watch Toy Story 3 again that last night had 8 grownups snuffling into their hankies even as the little ones, all heedless of Time and Death, gazed rapt and smiling at that small bright screen.