Gravity

What would we do without it? Gravity, I mean.

Would we float up endlessly? How could planes land?

What goes up, the saying goes, must come down. Gravity.

When I staggered to the bathroom at 6 a.m. this morning, I looked out the bathroom window and was astonished by the snow that wasn't supposed to start (according to the Weather Channel) for another hour. But what really caught my attention was how the snow was sticking to the trees.

Bern and I grew up in a place where snow sticking to the trees was a harbinger of bad news--it was going to keep snowing.

Bern went out and cleared our walks about 8 and helped our neighbor Mark clear our shared driveway. She told him about the snow sticking to the trees thing and he swore he never heard that.

When I came out to walk the dog through the snow, Mark (an obsessive by any definition) was still working on the driveway while Bern was clearing our back deck. We said hello and I said, "I don't like the way the snow is sticking to the trees" and he replied, "I know".

Only later did I realize (after talking with Bern) that he 'knew' because Bern told him earlier.

That's where gravity comes in. By the time it was dark tonight, all the snow was off the trees. Sometimes it fell in clumps that almost hit our dog when we were out on the deck and sometimes it came down gently. But it came down. There had been so much snow in the trees around our deck that there was about an inch of fallen snow on what Bern had cleaned altogether.

All day, gravity worked. Snow fell. The trees were finally free of it.

God bless gravity. It works.