Falling Faintly

​This weekend we did our first – and last, for awhile – socially distanced entertaining. Saturday night Jory’s cousins and aunt joined us for an outdoor candlelit dinner, and new friends did the same on Sunday. The weather was in the 70s, and, with the mountains as a backdrop, the evenings were gorgeous and fun (how could they be anything but, with those mountains?!)
 
And just like that, everything changed. 
 
Monday, we awake to a 52 degree temperature drop and a snowstorm.
 
Our children, born and raised Angelenos, don’t know what to think.  Neither does the dog.  In fact, she won’t pee or poop outside.
 
There’s nothing like a first snowfall. And I mean first.  Sure, those of you who live in winter regions enjoy the annual inaugural storm. However, having lived in LA for 26 years, I can’t remember my last snowfall. Our kids had played in a preschool yard of snow, but this.…this is a country. A new one at that.
 
Preschool and dance classes are canceled, and Jory risks his life on a Target run to buy three sleds.
 
Our kids are foreigners to snow, and the cruel irony of 21st century Coronavirus is that the girls’ (now virtual) school (located in perpetually sunny LA) is business as usual. Yes, I put on the “you signed up to stay there” hat.  But there is delicious time before school, during break, after school….
 
As the first flakes drop, Ali declares we need to break out the Christmas movies. All three kids think I am overdressing them (until they are outside for 30 seconds). Lillie thinks she can just take off a boot and walk around in a sock to get rid of a prickly (until the sock gets wet and she is far from home). Both girls say we need to return the “broken” sleds because they don’t know how to position their body weight to gain traction on a hill.   
 
My Massachusetts years serve me well, as, like throwing a Frisbee, there is an art to playing in snow. I am proud to say, by Day Two, the Kids Had. It. Down…Frozen. Solid. 
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The snow, my weather app tells me, will melt by end of the week, so like a coveted guest, we savor every moment with her.
 
As my world outside becomes pristine white, I feel how very deeply I have missed seasons. (And for the record: we pretty much went from summer to winter here!). 
 
The week has had its challenges: the Supreme Court position is prematurely filled as the election looms. A student at Tyler’s school tests positive for Coronavirus. A friend is burying her husband. 
 
And yet, right here, right now, this. This is joy. I teach my kids to sled. We build a snowman (because suddenly, “Do you wanna build a snowman?” isn’t just a Disney ditty). I make hot pumpkin bread and tea. We sit, mesmerized by the falling snow.
 
The alabaster blanket nestles everything; even the mountains bundle up behind thick clouds. Still, the snow falls. And the gorgeous lilt of James Joyce serenades my soul: 
 
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
 
Upon all of us. Living and dead.