(Stage left to one day last winter)
Kathy sat beside me as I drove, seemingly content to sing along with the tunes on the radio.
Her contentment wasn’t contagious, though, and after finally enduring all I could of the snails pace traffic and becoming almost physically ill from the unceasing view of the dirty red Chevy van I had been drafting forever in the fast lane, I made my best Sterling Martin move, gunning the Honda’s powerful four cylinders up to 12 mph and darting across the two lanes to the first exit. I was now on the road less traveled.
When we crossed the overpass, I could see the cause of the slowdown - the solitary blue lights a half-mile or so to the east, which stood out through the red lights of the hundreds of frustrated breakers who had stayed the course.
We passed by the zoo as Kathy karaokied another song from the ‘70s. I spotted two young people walking through the snowy fairways to our left, taking their time, unaware or unconcerned that the schools had chosen to open for business.
Watching them brought a memory out of hiding.
It was of a snowy day from a decade ago, when I walked with my daughter Alexis down a large path in some woods near our house in the valley of the hills.
It was one of those days (moments, really) that come as close to perfection as something can. I even remember thinking it at the time.
The snow and its cold quiet seemed to cleanse everything, presenting nature at its best.
We were walking through what would soon become an extension of the neighborhood we lived in, but on that day, the snow had covered any traces of developers, and we could have just as easily been somewhere in the middle of the Smokies, miles from civilization.
Alexis ran ahead, thrilled to be out of school and surrounded by white, yelling for me to come and see something, anything really, that had been transformed from ordinary to wonderful through the magic of snow.
We walked on a bit farther, and the roof of a house appeared above the tree line, smoke rising from its brick chimney. Alexis ran around a corner of trees, just out of sight.
I found her near a small hill, which we then slid down until the sky began to darken, which I took as a sign to head home.
Now, more than a decade later, I’m just older and Alexis is enjoying her new life in the Big Apple. I called her on Tuesday morning after learning they had snow in Central Park, and asked if she remembered that day we had played in the snow.
We talked briefly, mostly about the weather, and I succeeded in keeping her on the phone long enough to hear her laugh.
Later that evening, I walked through the woods behind my house, where I was glad to see traces of the year’s only snowfall still lying in the shade.
I turned a corner and again remembered the day with Alexis, and her snowball hitting me in the leg, causing her to laugh and run away. I remembered taking off my gloves and bending down to make a snowball of my own as she kept running through the snow and the trees, thrilled at being chased, and all the while laughing the laugh of a child, which echoed through the quiet around us, before landing at its proper place in my memory, where it lives forever.