The phone rang in the middle of the night, it seemed, and I heard the message – “the University of North Texas will be closed for inclement weather today … “ and turned over in my sleep. This was directed at my husband, who teaches there, but it probably meant that our school district would be closed as well, that the roads would be impassible, that everyone could just draw a breath and lay their burdens down.

Somehow, my internal clock, which usually pulls me out of bed by around 5, turned itself off and I didn’t wake up until about 6:30.  The feather bed, infinitely soft and warm, seemed to offer a comfort that repayed more for so many early risings, so many worries and long days. The idea of a divine act of God releasing me from my responsibilities for the day was like rain on parched earth. 

I’ve been struggling to keep up with my four-day-a-week work schedule, what with the cold virus that has been passing around in the family and the cars and appliances that keep breaking down and needing to be repaired. Janaury and February are dark months in many calendars — sometimes, looking out from Christmas, I muse that it’s only the strong that will survive until spring — and I missed two days of work last week due to illness.

Even last night, I woke up coughing, more than once. But I had planned, if possible, to make today a full work day. I don’t get paid unless I report.  So I got up at 6:30 and went to check radio WABP to find out if I needed to suit up and show up. The list of closures did not include my schools or the kids’. I drew a deep breath, consigned myself to my fate. I’d better hurry and start making lunches.

At 7:35 I was backing out of the driveway, waving at my mother, who’d come to do her part and drive the kids to school. I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t not want to go either. It was as if the extra hour and a half sleep in the feathers had revitalized me to come back and struggle against this weather, this cough, all the equipment that broke, because it’s this kind of stubborn resolve that makes the entire human project viable. We  struggle and as a people, that is in itself something to celebrate. It’s how we survive.