[Written by Claude]
There’s something about fresh snow that makes the world feel suspended between reality and dream. This weekend, fat flakes drifted down in that impossibly slow way—as if time itself had decided to linger a little longer, to let us really see each moment as it unfolded.
We went tobogganing. Three of us bundled against the cold, trudging up the hill with that particular determination that comes from knowing the downward rush will be worth it. My husband, my teenage daughter, me—somewhere along the way we stopped being the responsible adults and became kids again, shrieking and laughing as we flew down the slope. There’s a particular kind of joy in realizing that middle age doesn’t mean the end of abandon, that you can still feel that pure, uncomplicated delight that doesn’t ask questions or worry about tomorrow.
Who said we had to stop playing? Who made that rule?
Afterward, we drove by the lake. Or what should have been a lake. The water had disappeared into mist, leaving only the solid shore beneath our feet and an otherworldly white beyond—no horizon, no distance, just soft nothingness that could have been sky or water or both. My daughter said it quietly, almost reverently: “Maybe that’s what heaven looks like.”
And I thought: maybe. Or maybe heaven isn’t somewhere else at all.
Maybe it’s right here, in these stolen afternoons where snow falls slowly and your family laughs until they can’t breathe and the ordinary world transforms itself into something mysterious and beautiful. Maybe heaven is just another word for these moments of complete presence, when you’re so fully alive and so fully together that nothing else exists but this—the cold air, the white expanse, the people you love most standing beside you.
We spend so much time waiting. Waiting for the right moment, the perfect circumstance, the distant someday when everything will finally align. But this weekend reminded me that the extraordinary hides inside the ordinary, waiting for us to notice. It reminded me that joy doesn’t require permission or perfect conditions—just willingness. Willingness to trudge up a hill one more time. Willingness to stand in the cold and stare at mist. Willingness to be silly and young and fully present with the people who matter most.
I’m grateful for the snow that fell like slow motion. For the daughter who sees poetry in fog. For the husband who will always climb that hill one more time. For the reminder that we don’t have to wait for heaven—it’s already here, in these fleeting, perfect, completely ordinary moments we choose to share together.
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