How deep is the Easter snow this year?
Thigh high, that’s how deep.
It’s as pure and white as a lily, it’s looks as soft as a sweet fluffy lamb but it’s not really the stuff of Easter. . Girls will wear worn winter boots with their filmy blossom bright-colored Easter dresses to church services tomorrow and their mothers will risk pinning delicate corsages on the outside of their coats, dashing through slush and puddle trenches in the parking lot, dodging dirty splashes from car tires rolling past them. Young boys will have a first experience ruing being subject to a woman’s lust for fashion at the expense of common sense; the shorts that looked to charming in the little boys’ section of the department store weren’t displayed on legs that suffered from winter wind. You can’t blame a mother for dreaming of her own son looking cute in them on a sunny spring Sunday. When she thought “Easter” she thought of warm breezes, not sleety blasts. It’s been a longer than usual, colder than usual, twice as snowy as usual winter and perhaps Mom’s good sense was frozen out of her somewhere around the Valentine’s Day blizzard. Ready or not, boy knees, here comes your Easter outfit.
We could have had popsicle hunts this year instead of egg hunts. It wouldn’t be hard to hide the eggs, you understand; just dig a hole and stow the colored egg in it, cover it up with snow and you’re done with it. No need to look for hiding places among tulip foliage or in grassy patches. There are no tulips, the grass is still weighted down and inaccessible. The low drone coming through the closed windows is from snowblowers, not lawn mowers. The first robin of spring trilled yesterday from a branch outside my bedroom window. He was a fine sight, but he did look a bit disheartened. This isn’t his idea of proper homecoming weather. It’s a pity that robins don’t know how to mine for worms; a flock could dig a shaft down through the snow to the frozen ground and down further to the worms, a bonanza for the grime-streaked birdies.
Forgive my mental meanderings. Waiting for the snowplow to dig us out leaves me plenty of time to sit here and dream up all kinds of fantasies: Flowers, sunshine, and Easter outings in flirty skirts, a new season’s leaves and the scent of spring in the air.
Happy Easter, World
