Snow Day

Happy 2011 Everyone! I have been busy and haven't had a chance to write anything yet this year, though I will soon. In the meantime, here is a stream of consciousness essay Jon wrote yesterday about life at our home on a snow day. Yes, it's really like this. Enjoy.

It is a snow day, and inside is chaos. The dog barks, and the orange cat cries and whines, a persistent sound that will never cease, high and shrill and pained and undending until he is finally let out into the cold. A minute later he is back, scratching to be let in, crying again, the sound so persistent and unbearable and familiar that it is as if it never stopped at all. Downstairs, my brother pounds his drums ferociously with a brutal violence that shakes the walls of the house. I worry that it will fall apart. The noise of the drumset becomes part of the house, part of me, loud and obnoxious and unceasing, like the bark of the dog and especially the cry of the cat. My youngest brother is energy and clumsy excitement. Out of control, he bounces off the walls that are shaking from the sound of the drums, and plays football and basketball in the kitchen and is loud, but not quite as loud as the drums and the cat and the dog. The noise is growing now, a crescendo that does not seem to have a climax, but will continue growing and banging forever, or until my ears cannot take it and my head explodes. I stare at the window, my hands over my ears, and then make my escape through the door that lets in cold air and a blast of silence. Outside everything is white and gray. Snow falls softly and silently, muffling anything and everything. It clings to the trees and silences them, covers the ground and hides the dead brown grass, and melts on my head and my hear and my ears and silences the beat of the bass drum. I shiver and stand in the cold, gray silence, alone; the only person in the world. It is a snow day, and inside is chaos.