Remember snow days when we were kids? While it was still dark Mom or Dad would crack the bedroom door and say ‘You can sleep in, buddy. No school today.’ Was anything ever more relaxing; more welcome? Then breakfast was a leisurely affair. We didn’t know what leisure was. Life was a rush of assignments and activities, a coping with teachers, some of them crazy, and coming to terms with ourselves as we changed, day by day, and as the world around us whirled like a kaleidoscope.
I would stand over the floor furnace, straddling the grate, looking down into the lines of blueflame jets and then step to my window and look out through the ice-rimmed pane at the grey sky and the empty streets.
Time stood still long enough for me to find myself in it. That is, to feel in some wordless way how early was the morning and how rapid was the river.
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