New York City, February 9, 2017

★★★★★ To uncorrected eyes, the gray out the window and the spots on the glass made it seem possible that the convergence of forces in the overnight forecast had come out misaligned. But the spots were ice and the gray was driven snowflakes, and everything predicted was happening. There was no reason not to fall back asleep until the children came in demanding breakfast. Already by then there were drifts on the concrete lip at the top of the next building. The flakes filled the avenue. Sometimes the view seemed to clear but it was just that the flakes had become tiny and hard to see. The wind rattled like a sheet of paper. By afternoon there were actual pauses, but the snow came back in bigger flakes. At last the end of it really came. Light came from the west and the clouds grew lustrous as the five-year-old began packing snowballs. The top snow was too dry and crunchy to hold together, but the deeper layers compacted easily enough. The five-year-old set up two or three yards off and hurled his missiles. From the southern position, to return fire, all it took was a handful of the loose snow lofted into the wind. A gust pulled down a curtain of snow from the scaffolding. Stubby icicles had been bent into pointing uptown. Snow inside a glove could be borne well enough, but a bare hand snapping camera photos burned in the frigid air. A toddler in a stroller rolled into the elevator, its cheeks true apple-red from the cold and swollen from grinning.