Leah, Frozen

The next morning, as Leah lets her dog Poco out, she gazes across the brown lawn.

She is shocked to see a horde of robins bobbing, their rust-colored breasts the brightest color

of the gray day.

But these robins don’t bring her the loving joy of spring.

They are honestly kind of frightening.

"It’s February for God’s sake and there hasn’t been any snow since December," she says.

Where did winter go? Why has the snow -- so soft and gentle--  stopped falling? The only thing they get lately is a "wintry mix," mostly freezing rain that forms a thin white crust on the lawn.

"And while we’re at it," Leah says, "where the hell did the rest of the birds go this year?"

A few minutes later she puts the dog on the leash and walks down to the country store, for eggs. And the day’s mail.

And there, behind the counter making sandwiches, is the wife of the owner. Joanna.

Who used to make meatball grinders and turkey sandwiches daily. 

About a year ago, Joanna disappeared and no one knew why or was brave enough to ask.

Today, Joanna is back. Leah swallows hard.  Joanna has aged twenty years in the one since she disappeared.

Shrunken. Grey. Her once vibrant red hair is now the color of the robin's breast.

Leah is so frightened she isn’t sure what to say so she asks:

“How is your dog?”

And Joanna replies that Blacky is fine. 

They talk about dogs a bit. Leah’s. Joanna’s.

And as soon as she can gracefully get away, Leah exits the store.

Terrified, she walks home holding her breath. Life is so...scary and unpredictable, she thinks.

******

It is still the same morning. Leah has put her pajamas and bathrobe back on, as 

she is working at home today, putting the final touches on a University recruitment brochure.

She reads the content through and then she lifts her gaze up from her laptop and looks out the front window.

Her iPhone says it's 22 degrees.

Here it is, almost noon. And things are still frozzzzzzen. 

And here she is. Thinking again about Noni Natalya and dinner last night and what her grandmother asked her  to do.

Leah is overwhelmed. How can she possibly find out the true story of her great grandfather and his mother?

Impossible, she thinks, just impossible, shaking her head and getting up from her desk.  

No matter that she is wearing her powder blue bathrobe, she decides to go outside without her emerald parka on. Poco barks and follows her out the door.

She scuffs her slippers through the crusty brown lawn.

She wants to rip up the grass

and set fire to the trees.

Please God,  she says, please help me figure out how to tell the story of my ancestors.  

The next thing she knows she is lying down on the ground. She does a spread eagle. A snow angel without the snow. She feels the icy cold on her bare neck and head. She holds that position and stares into the grey clouds. In a moment, she is on her feet hurrying back into the house.

Trembling, she sits back down at her laptop. Her fingers are frozen as she sets them on the laptop keys. She reads the brochure for the final time. Then she emails it to her boss and the office copy editor.

She gets up and fixes herself a cup of turmeric tea with honey and milk. 

Then she returns to her laptop and tries something that she does sometimes when she's feeling like she needs inspiration. Or she needs reassurance that she's still a REAL writer; even though she composes boring drivel for her University job, she can still write short stories.

She pulls up a file at random. It’s called “Silver River.” It gives her chills to sit and read what she wrote exactly three years ago.

Moon.

To start, Gina is lying there, a fallen angel in a foot of fresh snow.  It is deep in the middle of the night.  She has wandered out to the darkest reaches of the backyard, out to the furthest row of white pines.  

Parked as she is in her white parka, in the white snow, she is almost invisible.  She is watching the sky.  Waiting.  There are stars galore, the sky is splattered.  But she is waiting for something more.  

That email she got early this morning was clear: “Tonight will see the first full moon to coincide with the winter solstice in 6000 years.  The last time this happened, Moses went up to Mount Sinai for the Ten Commandment stones.  Don’t miss this once-in-ten-thousand-lifetime event.  The moon will be so gigantic, so bright you won’t even need car headlights tonight.”

She is watching the horizon, just above the pines.  

Her attention is drawn by the soft glow of light gathering above the dark curtain of trees a few feet away.  The top edge of the tallest pine has a halo.

She goes up onto her elbows.  Steadies her gaze.  Suddenly the crisp edge of the moon is sliding up behind the tallest pine, the branches outlined.  Black fingers.  She falls back into the snow.  The flood of silvery moonlight is even more exquisite than she had imagined it would be.  She takes in one slow breath and holds it and suddenly sadness overtakes her and her eyes close.  

Gina’s breath comes blowing out in one long explosion.  She sits up.  Peels the gloves off.  Sets her hands flat in the snow, lets her fingers go numb, squeezes the snow into a freezing mess in each hand.  Warm tears pool and now the moon is almost fully visible and now, holy cow, it is a mighty white disc showering light onto the snow. 

“Gina?  Are you out here honey?”

That’s where Leah stops reading. She doesn't need to read more. 

She puts her hands over her face. She is remembering Jeffrey, and how she lived with him for four years before they talked about getting married and then parted ways. 

She gets up from the desk, goes to her bedroom, undresses and takes a very hot shower.  In a few minutes she is dressed in wool pants, her emerald parka, heavy socks, a hat, mittens and boots.

"Come on Ms. Pokes," she calls to the dog. She leashes her and they are out the door and headed for the dog park.

She's not sure why, but somehow reading the fiction makes Leah feels better.  She's not sure why but she thinks she can see her way forward.