America in Short

I talked to a friend today who lives in northern Canada. She had just gotten back from a from a friend’s from dinner. The thing was that she left six days ago. There’s a term for it, I’m told, “storm-stayed.” During dinner, the snow came and there she had to stay for almost an entire week.

She told me the first two days were torture, worrying about all the unfinished business.

But then something opened. She released.

I can’t put myself there, scanning someone else’s bookshelf, watching more and more snow fall, feeling like you over-stayed a welcome yesterday, petting the cat, petting the cat, sneezing.

I thought about it all day, on my bike ride, at work. Six days.

What about work? The dishes in the sink? The book I am supposed to finish?

Then I remembered something she said, “At some point you just have to surrender.”

The the last four days, she said, were heaven. “Cold air in my lungs, warmth against my skin.”

And I try and I breathe and when it all comes rushing in, I just keep repeating under my breath, “Snow-stayed. Snow-stayed.”

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