Silver White Winters

“Will this ice ever stop?” my husband asked as he looked out of the window.

I glanced up from my desk, aware that we were enduring our third ice storm within a week. Fighting off my own frustration at another day of canceled events, I decided to attempt a bit of nostalgia.

“Look at the bright side. Don’t the trees look like the line from The Sound of Music, you know, the one that talks about silver white winters that melt into Spring?”

My husband, always the worrier, shook his head. He was clearly concerned about his plants and shrubs. After a Christmas season of the single digit temperatures followed by a balmy January, our yard was as confused as a parent trying to post on TikTok.

I joined him at the window. A layer of sleet glazed every surface. Knowing that the half inch of frozen precipitation made walking outside too risky, I decided to make a joke.

“Well, you can thank Texas for all this weather. We seem to be the recipient of every weather front from The Lone Star state. If you ask me, I would have been happy to receive a load of avocados, but I guess nature had a different plan.”

Without smiling, my husband stared at me as if I was the most unsympathetic person in the world. Didn’t I have any compassion for his obviously confused daffodils?

“Here,” I finally said, handing him a seed catalog, “Why don’t you look at this and plan your summer garden.”

He took the magazine that promises bumper crops from every seedling and slumped into a chair. As I watched him flip through the pages of glossy vegetables, I could see him getting more enticed with every photo.

“Hey,” he asked, suddenly looking up from his daydreaming, “what day is it?”

“The second of February.”

“Just as I thought,” he whispered hopefully.

With trembling fingers, my husband turned on the television set to the morning news. As if on cue, a grinning man in a top hat held up a well-fed brown groundhog.

“Well, it’s official. I just can’t catch a break,” my husband muttered in gloom. “Now we’ll have six more weeks of winter.”

“Don’t worry,” I assured him, checking my computer, “the weather will warm up next week. In the meantime, just remember that even rodents can become habitual liars.”