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What is it about a snowstorm that makes me feel all warm and secure and childlike?
I woke up this Sunday morning, looked out the bedroom window at sunrise, and saw a blanket of snow in the pastures. I could feel an unexplainable thrill rise up in my chest as I gazed out at the whiteness, and suddenly I felt all close and cozy and comfortable. It's like the snow hushes the outside sounds, and brings the exterior world to a awe-inspired standstill for a few moments.
I remembered a time when I was a child in my grandmother's bed. I must have spent the night at her house, and, in the morning, I awoke to brilliant, golden, almost liquid sunshine streaming in through the warm, curtained windows after an all-night snowstorm. I remember hearing the somehow reassuring sound of a snowplow going past the house. I also remember feeling warm and safe and loved with my head on a huge, head-comforming feather pillow and my body snuggled under stacks of heavy, secure quilts. I remember Grammie Jo sitting on the bed and singing, "Barnacle Bill The Sailor" to me in an attempt to wake me up.
It is an isolated memory. I don't know what came before it or after it in the sequence of time and events. But the "What" and the "Why" of the event are unimportant. The feelings that the memory awaken in me is all that matters. And those feelings are love, love, love, safety, security, acceptance and...love. (Feelings that I didn't often feel as a child with my mother.)
So, every morning that I awaken and find a fresh coating of snow on the ground, I go to this oasis of joy from my past, and it makes me feel like living.
After looking out at the snow, I crawled back into bed under the heavy comforter. I put my arms around Mary Ellen, and I laid there for another hour, just feeling the warmth and peace and happiness of being alive.
I've only awakened warm and secure and childlike in a snowstorm once in my life. I was visiting my grandma in Colorado, where she was a short time. I was really young and barely remember it. But it was nice. My aunt ruined it by going outside and building a baby snowman, and no one would allow me to go outside to make one, too. Well, there went my security. 
to the good life.
