In the dark, I open my daughter’s curtain to see snow falling in the streetlamp between our house and the neighbors’, and I wake my daughter as I usually do, talking quietly and setting a purring cat beside her. The cat burrows under the covers.

In the steady snow last night, we visited the library and the librarian, where my daughter opened a box of tinsel and spread a glittery rope over a bookcase and the mantel. Outside, damp flakes fell on our cheeks.

Everything’s slowed down a little, with slush on boots.

In variations of emotion, the conversation repeats, Winter’s here.

For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.

– Vincent van Gogh