We have nine snowmen in our front yard.  One snow child.  In the past month or two, I rolled, lifted, and balanced balls of snow for their snow bodies, searched for sturdy twigs.  My wife peeled carrots, dumped raisins in a dish, ransacked closets for hats and mittens, a moth-eaten vest, an old apron, faded scarves that wave in the wind.  Five-year-old Sibby patted ice-cold stomachs, smoothed bumpy lumps of snow, tucked old boots and shoes in front of round white bottoms. We have a large lawn, as do our neighbors on the cul-de-sac, but we have the most and best-dressed snowmen.  In the mornings, I clear the porch steps, shovel our walks and driveway, before I head off to my job at the PO.  My next-door neighbor shovels his walks and driveway in the evenings.  His MAGA sign keeps getting buried, and he keeps digging it out.  Of course, when he waves, I wave back like a good neighbor. Somehow, though constant, this snow is not burying us. Hard to explain.  Yesterday, Sibby said it first. “When’s it going to stop?”

This Saturday morning, I stand at the window and see that the heavy overnight snow is perfect for building snowmen.  “Maybe we should add to the snow family,” I tell my wife and Sibby.  “Or do a dog or cat,” though I’m not sure how.  After breakfast, we suit up in coats and boots, hats and mittens that have come to feel like a uniform.  Freezing cold air is waiting on the porch overlooking our white yard below. New neighbors three doors down are out in their yards with their toddler, who is piling snow on his head.  Suddenly, Sibby pulls up short at the top of the stairs and squints at the nine snowmen in our white yard.  “What?” I say. “What?” my wife echoes.  We are both oddly fearful.  Sibby shakes her head, hat tassels flopping. “I’m done.  No more snowmen.”  She slams back inside, and we follow.  She kicks her snow boots under the kitchen table, unzips the polka dot snowsuit my wife just zipped her into.  Without looking at each other, my wife and I unzip our own parkas, unlace our boots.  Sibby clicks on the weather channel, where a new weatherman is talking about last night’s record snow accumulation. Recently, three weathermen have come and gone with no explanation. This new weatherman is non-committal as he talks about snow patterns, lake-effect snow, and tells historical anecdotes that are meant to be comforting.  We have hot chocolate with our snow cones.  Sibby says, “We’re running out of syrup.   Why aren’t we running out of snow? When’s it going to stop?”

Monday, an early meeting takes me to work before I do my usual shoveling, so I shovel in the evening before dinner.  Sibby is replacing pilfered carrot noses.  Then she sets to making snow angels to watch over the snowmen.   The next-door neighbor, out shoveling too, is surprised to see us.  He leans on his huge red shovel that has partially rescued his red MAG sign, and calls out, “Your snowmen sure got spiffy outfits.  You raid the closets?”  In my mind, I too think “snowmen, snowman”– leftover from childhood.  Our neighbor is still peering at our populated yard, so to be neighborly, I call, “Come on over and visit our snow people.” I really do say “snow people.”  “Hey, sure thing,” he says and plants his shovel in the drift beside his sign, then crosses from his white yard into our white yard.

Sibby and I are proud snow parents as he slowly circles the nine figures, admiring the plaid vest, limp scarves, and the apron with lemons.  He gingerly shakes the twig arm of the largest snowman, then he praises Sibby for sharing what was surely her own ratty stuffed bunny.  Squinting, he says, “Hey, I’m really pleased to meet my neighbor’s snow people.  Yeah, great snow people you have here.”  “And snow angels,” Sibby says, and flops backwards to create another one.  I say, “It’s sort of strange how the snow doesn’t seem to stop.”  “Yeah,” he says.  “But soon the government is going to do something about it.  You’ll see.”  He steps around the latest snow angel.  “Like what?” Sibby says, from flat on her back. “Do what?”  Yeah, I think, do what?   Our neighbor just waves and slogs back to his yard.  We can hear him muttering “snow people, snow people” as he gives his sign a final thump in place, “hah, snow people.”  Next time I see him out shoveling in his white yard, he pretends they aren’t there. We all pretend something. 

I’m riding shotgun with our big grandma of a fridge sticking out the back. She’s sandwiched between the hatch and the rusted bumper, tied by the rope from my tire swing.  I rub her smooth metal top where she held my cereal.  We’re headed to the dump.  It’s where Dad says quitters go.  He isn’t one to give up but his last attempt to fix her only got us a week of semi-cool air before she stopped altogether.  Mom spent the morning not sleeping after the night shift to cut cry onions for beef stew and Shepherd’s pie so that the defrosted round roast was used before it spoiled. The smell made me nauseous, but she says a meal isn’t a meal without meat, which is another of the differences between me and them.  

In the crusty beige console is a pack of cool blue gum.  Only two slivers are left.  They’re limp, having lived the morning in the back pocket of Dad’s jean cut-offs.  I peel off the foil and stuff a rectangle into my mouth.  The flavor fades real quick, but the chewing is good enough to keep going on and on. 

It’s fixable, Dad says, just needs a new compressor, but GE doesn’t make them anymore ‘cause they want you to buy a new one every goddamn decade.  On eBay, there’s a guy in Clovis, California, who’s charging an arm and a leg, plus shipping and handling, for one, which is criminal but still way less than buying a used fridge from Ollie’s Appliance Outlet.  But Mom is still boiling hot about cooking stew and pie on a summer morning, so asking her to live a week without a crisper is a no go. 

The car smells like the cigarettes Dad promises Mom he isn’t smoking, and she believes him even as she steps over butts to go to work every night.  It’s hot enough for Dad to have the windows rolled down.  As we speed along the highway, I lean out with my mouth open to trap more cool into the gum.  It’s not hot enough for the AC.  AC hot is triple digits ‘cause he says it uses up gas.  It’s like how he paid extra for a car that’s manual shift with crank windows in order to cut out the middleman.  It’s not just about the cost of the thing; it’s the add-ons they’ll suck out of ya.  And yet, he’s never mentioned how much it cost to get me.  To buy me?  I found the adoption paperwork at the bottom of his gray metal lockbox that’s never locked.  I was thousands, and that’s just the upfront price. I’ve had a good amount of extras over the years, too.  I keep a tally and don’t know if he is too, or this is another of the big differences between me and them.

As we bump down the back road to the dump, dust sticks to my failed attempt at blowing a bubble, so now it feels like I’m chewing a clam.  We’re waved over to the recycling road entrance, and Dad squeezes the steering wheel tight as we pass by rows and rows of grandma fridges just like ours; wide and squat with welcoming round edges.  The metal detailing on their handles shines ‘cause they’ve got none of that plastic crap that Dad says will be the end of us. 

The stained t-shirt attendant shows us where to park.  He hangs his head sorrowfully and mutters, such a shame, she’s a real beaut, as Dad gets out.  I watch from the side mirror as the men shake hands and wonder if they can feel each other through their thick thumb blisters.  They pull in close for tap, tap, taps on each other’s backs before separating.  Dad recounts the injustice of the whole thing, his hand on the attendant’s shoulder for support.  Then they put on their work gloves and get down to the business of haulin’ out the trash.  Gently, they nudge her frigid metal body out of the car and set it upright.  The attendant assures him it won’t get crunched, he’ll see to that, someone’ll at least pick her up for spare parts.

Dad returns and slams the driver-side door so hard I choke, swallow my gum.  He peels out, leaving a cloud of dust that looks like fireworks.  I wave goodbye through the sparkling dirt.  When goodbyes are too hard for me, Mom says enough now, you were too young to remember.  But this is the biggest difference between me and them, being left is who I am.  So before the ride to the dump, I tucked a note inside grandma fridges’ metal icebox telling her that she was loved, that she was a perfect fit even though we aren’t perfect, and that we wanted to keep her, but it was too hard.

At home, I pretend the place where the grandma fridge lived is my kitchen bedroom.  The wall behind her was painted a hubba bubba pink that’s so bright the fridge shape color radiates onto the oil-splattered white walls around it.  The floor is a fluffy filth covered with magnets, bottle caps, and rubber bands.  But a sweep of my hand shows that she had been protecting the tile underneath, it’s still shiny new.  

For dinner, we eat more of the same from lunch because Mom says, waste not want not.  It’s the remains of our dead grandma’s fridge, jars with just a scrape of jam, pickles that are mostly onions and mustard that disappear into bread that’s been saved for the birds.  Mom makes a serving platter out of plastic hamburger and hotdog bun bags and puts paper napkins under our chewing as plates.  Cleanup is just brushing away some crumbs, and we are done.  There is nothing left to do but ignore the emptiness, the wide openness, the space no one’ll ever talk about.

We stand in front of the cameras dressed in red, white, and blue. We clutch pocketbooks and pearls, pull the silk scarves woven loose through our arms around bare shoulders. We smile into the lens with an unwavering tenacity we hope convinces the rest of the world—and ourselves—that we were placed upon the Earth for this exact purpose. We sing hymns and pray for the safe return of our astronaut husbands and our sanity. We place hands across hearts and swear we are proud, happy, and thrilled, even though the veneer wears thin from overuse. We nod yes, even when we mean no. We try not to think about what ifs and worst case scenarios. We want to believe in happy endings. We try not to dwell on what we cannot control. We instead hug our children and corral monsters from dark corners. We sew buttons and fix our hair and the flywheel on the lawnmower. We bandage knees, clean scrapes, the dinner dishes piled high in the sink. We sweep the floor and wash the windows in the middle of the night when the curtains can be opened once again. We solve X for why. We attend picnics and birthday parties, bridge games where tea and sympathy are served in equal measure. We smoke cigarettes and gossip about politics and infidelities to pass the time. We commiserate, laugh, cry, put a new pot on to boil. We refrain from asking questions like: How will we survive if everything goes BOOM? We know when silence is the only cure. We help our sons and daughters cut stars out of construction paper to make a chain to count down the days until their father comes home. We study our reflections in the bathroom mirror. We are tired. We are husks blowing in the breeze—dry, empty. We brush our teeth, our hair one stroke at a time. We spritz perfume on our wrists, even though we are alone. We lie on chaises in the backyard at two in the morning because it’s the only time we can breathe deep. We tilt our heads toward the moon shining above and imagine our husbands floating like weightless birds in the night sky, while gravity keeps us grounded. We know that every little thing we’ve done will be written down, preserved. We know there will be a time of reckoning, looking back. We close our eyes and sigh. We remind ourselves to take one day at a time because that is all we are given.

She finds the rosary tangled in the bottom drawer of his dresser, amid balled socks and a single cufflink shaped like a compass rose. The beads are wooden—olive pits carved smooth by generations of thumbs. The crucifix hangs crooked, silver worn thin at the corpus, the face rubbed away. She lifts it out, lets it uncoil in her palm.

Outside, snow falls in fat flakes. The backyard is a white sheet pulled tight over the garden beds where he planted tomatoes every May, even after the doctor said no more heavy lifting. The bird feeder swings empty from the maple branch. The bag of seed sits unopened in the garage.

He died on a Tuesday, mid-sentence, fork halfway to his mouth. “Pass the—” and then the slump, the clatter. The paramedics were kind but efficient; they did not linger.

She threads the rosary through her fingers, bead by bead. The first Hail Mary catches in her throat—full of grace—but she presses on. Her voice is small against the radiator’s hiss. She reaches the Glory Be, pauses at the Fatima prayer he always skipped, calling it superstitious fluff. She skips it, too.

Forty-seven years they shared this drawer, though it was nominally his. She kept her own things tidy in the nightstand: reading glasses, lip balm, a dog-eared copy of The Joy of Cooking with his marginal notes in pencil—too much salt, try thyme. She digs deeper: a matchbook from their honeymoon hotel in Niagara, cover faded to pink; a ticket stub from the opera where he proposed, Puccini smudged by rain; a lock of her hair, tied with faded ribbon, from the night they met at a parish dance.

The window whitens. She stands at the window, rosary dangling from her fist. The neighbor’s dog barks once, muffled, then falls silent. She thinks of the wake tomorrow: black dresses, covered dishes, the practiced phrases. She will nod, accept hugs that smell of perfume and casserole, say thank you until the words go flat.

She slips the rosary over her head, lets it settle against her collarbone. The wood is cool at first, then warms. She walks to the kitchen, fills the kettle, sets it on the stove. While it heats, she opens the back door. Cold rushes in. She steps onto the porch in sock feet, feels the snow melt through wool to skin.

In the yard, she kneels where the tomatoes once grew. The ground is frozen. She digs with bare hands—nails scraping ice—until a small hole appears, ragged, no deeper than a teacup. She removes the rosary, holds it a moment. If it stays above ground, she will pray. She places it in the hole and covers it with snow-damp earth. Her palms come away black, streaked white.

Back inside, the kettle whistles. She pours water over tea leaves in his favorite mug—the one with the chip from that argument in ’92. The steam rises, curls, dissipates. She sips once, sets it down.

Upstairs, she strips the bed. Sheets into the hamper, pillows fluffed and recentered. She opens his closet, runs her hand along the row of shirts: flannel, cotton, the silk one he wore to weddings. She selects the blue button-down, lays it flat on the mattress. From the drawer, she retrieves the cufflink and fastens it to the left sleeve, though the right is empty.

She lies down beside it and curls her body around the fabric. The house settles: creaks in the joists, wind against the eaves. She closes her eyes, listens for the rhythm of his breath that is no longer there.

Morning comes gray. She rises, makes coffee strong and black. The bird feeder still swings empty. She fills it now—sunflower seeds scattering across the snow. A chickadee lands almost immediately, pecks once, twice, then flies off.

At the wake, she stands straight-backed beside the casket. Friends file past, touch her arm. He was a good man, they say. She nods. When it’s over, she drives home alone, the radio off.

That night, she opens the drawer again. It is empty now, save for dust and a single olive pit she must have missed. She rolls it between thumb and forefinger, feels the faint grooves where prayers once wore paths.

She places it on her tongue and swallows it whole. It lodges somewhere deep, a small hard seed.

Later, she stands at the kitchen window and looks out at the yard. The feeder is empty again. The tracks in the snow are small, precise—bird feet, nothing more. She walks to the buried spot and kneels once. No digging this time. Just her palm flat against the ground, feeling for anything that might answer.

There is none.

She stands, brushes snow from her knees, turns back toward the house. Inside, the kettle waits. She fills it, strikes a match from the old book, lights the stove.

The flame catches blue, steady.