maintaining the illusion

My girlfriend has long professed her love of winter, especially when it's snowing or the middle of summer. When the snow has been sitting in blackened heaps on the corners of busy intersections and making sidewalks impassable, treacherous, or disgusting, she spends most of her time complaining about having to walk in the sludge. Which I do, too.

So it snowed again today, not much, but enough that she's back to talking about how wonderful things are. We made hot chocolate and watched it fall well into the night, not talking, just enjoying the moment, like it would be beautiful like this all year round, like it wasn't just going to be inconvenient later. Maybe that's even the beautiful part--it's so ephemeral, so hard to find time to celebrate, so prone to inciting spontaneous celebration. Each flake dampens all sound and makes the world quiet and whispers quietly that you might as well live for today, you don't know when the world will be this wonderful again.

All the ruined travel plans, the car accidents, the cold, lonely, wet walks to public transit, it's all worth it for this quiet moment, maintaining the illusion we're happy and everything will be okay.