Flash Mob Snow

Midnight and I am sitting in the rocking chair nursing Koen but just behind the blackout shades the city lights are as bright as a November afternoon, every night. I peek out to see if we are indeed getting rained on, or if the low pressure system shifted just far enough to whiten the streets. Rain, just rain, I see. Koen is amazingly efficient for a change and goes right back to sleep. My dreams shift between the mundane (but welcome) discovery that we did, in fact, save some of Dietrich and Elliott's spring clothes from babyhood and need not get new ones for the baby; to disturbing dreams of our city's shopping district turning red light in the face of a budget shortfall.

It seems like minutes before Koen is shifting around, but it is nearly morning and I am giddy with the knowledge that I've had a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Knowing this is his last deep time of sleep, I dash to the bathroom before the back and forth sleep of the early morning hours begin. Something is different. There is no need to turn on a light in there and I know it before I even look out -- we've been hit by the snowstorm. I just learned that a flash mob can refer to a completely innocent and fun coordinated effort to show up, together, somewhere, and dance, or sing (I learned this from one of the few high school kids I know who knows just about everything in current trends). And that is what those soggy spring snowflakes decided to do. They just showed up! They were supposed to go north, we were below the "snow line", we were in the green, not the blue. But there was no denying it, we were snockered again (that should be a word if it isn't already).

I broke the news to my husband and household-snow-shoveler-of-the-year (while I take full advantage of having birthed a baby surgically as long as the snow season lasts). Once the sun was up, the sticky surprise offered the first of many contradictions that we are sure to encounter during Lent. It's a day we remember our fragility, a day that feels dark, a day we even accept ashes smeared on our foreheads. And yet it is beautifully blinding to be outside, every inch covered in more inches of snow.