The phone rang early this morning; and by early, I mean like, 5:30 in the AM early.
"It's sleepin' outside!" the gruff voice exclaims through the wire and then some heavy panting. "It's realllllllyyy sleepin out 'dere!"
Another person, you maybe, having picked up the phone so early in the morn to so gruff and unidentified a voice, might be alarmed, but not me. And probably not anybody else that lives here.
We know who this heavy breather is. And after so many years of these calls, we know what he means too.
He's Harvey, an older fellow that does pretty much anything that needs to be done around our main business. He is a stout ol' guy with very few teeth, barrel chested and ruddy faced, and loyal to the bone and he is reporting, at 5 in the morning, on the weather in town. It's sleeting.
I've tried, on several occasions to suggest that the actual term is "sleeting" but he disagrees - vehemently. So, this morning, it is sleeping.
And, today, for the first time, I thought, perhaps he is right. Unable to go back to sleep, my bed having been claimed sometime in the night in a hostile take over by one little stink and one big husband, I poured a cup a', stoked the fire, and curled up by the window in the encroaching silver light of dawn.
Here's the thing...
It really does seem, when the world is still and encased in ice, that it is sleeping. Dormant in the face of brutal extremes and frigid winds. Waiting, far more patiently than I, for the warmth of a higher sun and a gentler day.
