The Skunk at the Picnic

Who’s your devil’s advocate?

Snow Scene at Argenteuil by Claude Monet, 1875 (public domain - Sailko, Wikipedia)

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.” — William Blake, 1790

I love my seven-year-old daughter. She’s filled with energy and excited to greet each new day (albeit much earlier than the rest of our household).

Yesterday morning, we awoke to a particular silence in the neighborhood. That sense of calm and quiet that accompanies a blanket of snow, pierced only by the occasional passing snowplow.

There’s a reverie—ever so brief—as the mind wanders to memories of childhood, when such days would herald an extra early departure of my dad, headed for work as he braved the slippery roads; a sense of anxiety as we listened to the radio, anticipating for our school to be announced as one of the cancellations; and the first of many sojourns outside to frolic in the winter wonderland of our neighborhood.

A snow day as an adul…