White Space

When I left the house this morning to take my son to his gymnastics class, it was perfectly nice out, whatever that means in NYC in December. But now it is snowing and I am indoors trying to get work done.

I moved from dropoff at gym to a nearby Starbucks (aren't they all "nearby"?), where I crashed and returned phonecalls for an hour. Since I am currently office-less but not work-less, I take whatever I can get. While I was drinking my coffee, I enjoyed an article by Lisa Belkin about working wherever the spirit moves you, in the "white space" of our world. The snow was coming down, and I was in my very own white space.

Sitting there, I felt kind of sad. Snow seems to me like tahara, purification. Sure, it is nasty and gray once it hits the ground (this is New York, after all), but it muffles our grumbles and softens our blunt edges. The snow is coming down, fairly fast and furiously--we're in for a big storm today and a big storm on Sunday too.

What do children see when they see snow? I am just learning about this through my son's eyes. He wants to eat it (where do they learn this) and we are having to teach the "never eat yellow snow" lesson. He doesn't seem to get cold and I find myself saying "you need a sweater because I am cold" more than once a day. But snow...well, I want him to love it, to be an excuse to throw caution to the winds and go out and play, to drink hot chocolate instead of regular milk or water, to build a snowperson or to just go a little crazy and throw a snowball or two. There is a purity, an innocence that comes with a snowfall, and maybe I just want to keep him a baby just a little longer so we can enjoy it together.

So I'll take the snow, where ever it may fall, even if it interrupts my work and shifts my focus to other, more lovely things. And maybe I can get my son to not eat yellow snow, but instead sit at our window and look out at the snow falling, and hear the quiet. Given that he's almost 3, it is unlikely that this white quiet will last for more than a minute or so, but it's good to still have hope.