I’ll be honest upfront. I have a love/hate relationship with snow. I love the sounds of a snowstorm. I don’t mean the wind if it’s there, I mean the quiet hush that can settle over the land, a muffled calm. It’s peaceful.

I love the starkness it can leave behind, everything white with a gray or black background. The lack of color is beautiful in its own way.

I love how it slows down life for a bit. You can’t go fast. You have to stop and take a measure of the moment.

And, I hate shoveling it. Sure, it’s a good workout, if you’re fit enough and not at a risk for a heart attack. But, it can be a pain. I drive a Subaru, so often I only shovel the end of my driveway where the snowplows leave their pile of detritus as they go by since once that freezes in place it can become an implacable wall. But this snowstorm, I did the entire driveway. It was deep enough I thought it prudent.  And it’s not just the weight of the snow that’s the issue. It’s moving it to a place that’s out of the way.

I’m a person who actually loves the seasons. I love how they mark the inexorable passage of time.

“One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.” – Dylan Thomas A Child’s Christmas in Wales

I’ve been alive for over a half-century now and at times it seems the years fly by faster. The snippet from Dylan Thomas reminds me so much of Falls Village CT, the town I grew up in. In some ways it never lost a certain Victorian charm.  We were part of the modern world, but separate enough that we were ensconced in a tiny bubble. In the winter, I’d lay awake on a snowy morning hoping to hear the snow plow go by.  We’d build forts in the snow and have epic snowball fights. We’d come in sopping wet and warm ourselves by the wood stove and drink hot chocolate and share epic tales amongst ourselves.

When it got a bit closer to Christmas we’d go to the nursery and buy a 14′ tall tree, because we could.  We’d decorate the first 8′ and then above that, the best we could.

It’s not Christmas yet here, but at GMS Headquarters it’s slowly arriving:

Christmas Lights

And soon I’ll start listening to Christmas music.

And I’ll try not to think about the next round of shoveling I have to do.

I’d love to sit around all day sipping hot chocolate and doing nothing, but there’s work to do and eventually more snow to shovel.

And I can hear the occasional plow go by, getting the roads fully clear.

All is well here at GMS Headquarters.