One big flake

Yesterday at about 5 p.m., the snow began to fall. It's winter in Chicagoland, ladies and gentlemen. My drive home was interesting, to say the least. Not bad, just long. People forget how to drive, I think, when it snows.

And it kept falling.

And falling.

At about 9 p.m., I put on my old boots (the same ones I've had since college, the ones I wore when Mike and I walked to the video store through about a foot of fresh snow, the ones that made me realize that "waterproof" doesn't count if the snow is higher than the top of your boots) and went for a walk.

It was so quiet, as if the fresh coating of snow insulated my neighborhood. The only sounds I heard were my footsteps and the faraway scrape of the snowplow. I stopped walking, tilted my head back and caught snowflakes on my tongue.

I stopped at the park and sat on the swings for a couple of minutes, swaying back and forth in the moonlight as the snow fell all around me. It was beautiful, and peaceful.

Soon, it was time to head home. I walked slowly down the middle of the street, enjoying the sound of my footsteps in the new-fallen snow. I giggled to myself - a grown woman, wandering the streets of Arlington Heights alone on a snowy night, catching snowflakes on her tongue, playing at the playground. My inner child smiled, and went inside for a cup of cocoa. My inner adult loved the fact that it had Rumpleminze in it.