A Winter Morning

942 Words4 Pages
I am sleeping. The wind is howling and the snow is blowing outside, but inside our house the woodstove keeps us so toasty that we’re sleeping nothing save our pyjamas and a sheet. My alarm goes off. I am jolted awake, and I scramble off the end of the bed (I’m jammed on the wall side and Cameron gets the aisle seat). I head to the windowsill to turn off the alarm. In utter darkness, I make my way out of the bedroom by feel and by sheer familiarity. I immediately head downstairs, still groggy and half asleep. I head to the back hall. I fish around in the pile of coats and curling pants and scarves, looking for my snowpants. I find them, and I pull the snowpants on over top of my pyjamas. I look for my warmest down jacket and slip it on. A scarf, toque, and mittens are quickly added to my outfit, and I grab the flashlight from its very important home near the back door. I slip on some once-stylish-now-turned-farm-boots-due-to-salt-damage. I’m not wearing any socks. I grab the snow shovel, and I slip out the backdoor. By this time it’s 5:20am, but it is still utterly pitch-black outside, the sun still asleep like Cameron upstairs. I survey our car in the beam of my flashlight. The windshield and side windows are covered in snow. I start scraping and clearing the windshield, still half asleep. The car clean, I shine my beam down the long driveway. I can only see a few feet ahead of me, so I always walk the length of the whole driveway–about the length of a football field–checking how deep my sockless-boot-clad feet sink into the powdery snow. Too deep and I’ll have to wake up Cameron and get him to blow the driveway with the tractor. Not too deep and I’ll just clear the problem drifts with my shovel. I bumble along shining the flashlight back and forth, poking snowdrifts with my salt-stained boots. Occasionally, I’ll stop to shovel an uncharacteristically deep spot
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