We woke this morning, like many people, to a truly wintry world. Snow already lightly covering gardens, cars, streets and houses, and more flakes falling fluffily through the sky.
It has already been a long night in our house, with less sleep and more sickness than one could want, and the snow, though predicted, seemed like a final nail in the coffin of my being able to face the day.
But then the children got up. From stumbling around like zombies, one mention of the word "snow" was enough to lift their heads, brighten their faces and send them running to the windows to see if it had truly happened.
All through breakfast they were constantly checking the progress of the snow across the patio outside. All the way to school they marvelled at the new white world and pointed out to each other this or that feature: a normally unnoticed part of our trip now seen in a new way because of its icy, sugary coating.
I thought, how wonderful it is to be a child, and to see snow as only a good thing! To not care about what it means for journey times or scarily skidding cars, wet feet or busy getting-too-fro-ness, but to just be happy that the snow had returned and the transformation had once again happened: the magic wand of winter had been waved and changed our dreary world into a bright and sparkling Christmas grotto.
And so I resolved to try to put away my middle-aged grumpiness and, at least for today, enjoy the world for how it is, and take pleasure in it where I can. And now the sun is shining.
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