An elegy for my winter socks

It snowed a lot in Boston a few nights ago. Dumped about a foot from the heavens and drowned us all. The Monday I woke up to it, I walked for almost an hour from one side of the city to the other in order to make it to a dentist appointment. Most of the snow hadn’t been shoveled, so my jeans were wet up to my knees. My boots were filled with flurry.

It hasn’t warmed enough to melt yet. The piles are crowded around the sides of the roads and sidewalks, pathways carved out for us like little canyons of ice.

Outside someone is carving their shovel (or pick or scraper) into the ice, tearing away at it to free whatever lies beneath. I can hear the crack and scrape through the thin windows of my apartment.

Mostly, I like snow. A few times in the last few days I’ve slid on the ice on the sidewalk—felt the yank in my belly as my center of gravity shifted, threatening to fall.

The wind has been biting, skating across the mounds of ice and snow to rush past me in a cold fury. It cuts through my coat, but still I try to walk most of the way to work.

In the winter, the cats burrow under the comforter, making little hills and valleys in the bed. But mostly, they stay close to me for warmth.