This past Tuesday, New York was hit by a massive east coast storm that was supposed to bury us in snow, but halfway through, the snow turned to sleet and the world froze. I slid across the walkways in the dark, when the dogs had to go out to pee. The next morning, the maintenance guys came back and salted the sidewalks and broke up the ice in the parking lot, but they left the backyard as it was and we have had an ice rink ever since. Butterfly is in love. Cricket may be a snow bunny, but Butterfly, it turns out, is an ice skater. Her ice rink is bumpy and often runs uphill, and she has to skate around various impediments, but that only seems to make it more of an adventure.
Surveying the territory
Testing the ice
Going on an adventure
and returning
Happy.
Cricket has been more circumspect about the whole thing. She has found it impossible to dig into this strange version of snow, and has had no luck removing leaves from their icy casings. She sniffs huge clumps of snow for signs of pee and birdseed, but she spends most of her time on the edges of the ice, ready to return to solid ground at any moment. But every once in a while, she lets loose, jumping and spinning and leaping across the ice, while her sister placidly skates along nearby. They meet up to check in, sniffing each other’s noses and ears, before going their own ways again.
“What is this stuff?”
“Wheee!”
“Whoohooo!”
“And a two-footed landing!”
But it’s Butterfly who is loving this new ice world. No matter how far out she goes, and no matter how high she climbs, she leaves no foot prints, and I’m realizing that, for years, she must have felt unsteady walking on the grass, and now, with ice under her feet, she finally feels secure.
Butterfly, in her own world.
rachelmankowitz 