Toes in the Snow

No coat or hat today. The west wind is blowing sunshine this afternoon. It’s not overwhelming the other sounds. I hear airplanes rumble, the hum of the furnace exhaust. The rapid-fire drops streaming in the downspout. Melting snow on the ground has a sound. Snap, crackle, pop like Rice Crispies.

My father didn’t witness snow until he was nineteen and the Italian army sent him north to Bologna. He told me how miserable the cold was and how in Ceccano, his hometown, it hadn’t snowed in a hundred years. His grandfather told him about it once before the war when there was time for story telling.

A woodpecker pounds for a few seconds. I guess he found nothing and went away. A bird tweets, a hawk shrieks, guns fire sporadically at the sportsman’s club. I can’t see any of it. My eyes are open but none of the makers are in sight. I hear crows call and respond from my left and right.

I scraped away snow with my bare foot to feel if the grass was like it was in Italy and just hiding from the cold. I visited the farm where my mother was from and had run carefully barefoot in the grassy vineyards. The seven cows my uncle kept pastured there left cow pies which when uncooked are unpleasant between the toes.

My mother accepted the horrific snows of Endicott, New York like she accepted everything else. We moved there from Rome a month before my first birthday. Six months later a twenty three year old woman who had never owned a coat went to the market for my milk wrapped in a blanket. She didn’t tell me this. She wouldn’t complain. I heard it from an aunt on my father’s side who cursed her kin and shamed them into helping us.

My foot feels less cold than I thought it would I’ve felt worse at the beach. Maybe it is expectation at work or the fact the snow is only a little colder than the air touching it. I’m making a snowball to 

compare the sensitivity of the two extremities. My hand feels ready to fall off after a few seconds holding a snowball. Can Mr. Science or Bill Nye tell me why? Don’t suggest Dr. Oz. He is more make believe than the humbug wizard in the movie.

I met Ethiopian students at Pitt. I complained about the weather in pre-class conversation. They laughed and told me about running out in the first snow they saw to touch it, how it felt like white fire when they held it too long, how quickly the newness wore off and how they bought coats, sweaters and scarves to keep the cold away.

The airplane sounds are nearly constant. Some times of year the flight paths shift and it seems every jet in the east is flying over my house. In the pre-dawn morning I can see lights from a dozen planes in the ten minutes I’m out with my dog. After the sun comes up the contrails look like pick up stix in the sky.

I was going to wait to see if my shadow would reach the woods, but it’s gotten cloudy and my wet foot is feeling chilled.