The Dozing Oak

We’re finally home, I exclaim. I scamper inside and blow on my hands. Flinging off my church flats, I pull on my boots, still wet from yesterday, and run through the kitchen, where dishes pile on the counter and musty beige flowers line the walls, to the back door. I fling it open. I run past the sleeping Japanese maple and the ice pool, past the dozing oak, down the bitter steps until I arrive at the pond. My steps are silent in the snow--which is untouched except for my prints.

I finally arrive at the sacred pond where I had frolicked on yesterday. It's a little koi pond surrounded with rocks that thrives in the spring with gold fish and algae fluttering about it. It has a waterfall, made of rocks, that gracefully spills its clear waters into the mother pond. However, it’s winter now and the pond that used to be a welcoming home to fish, is now a frozen chunk of ice and the waterfall that flowed so beautifully, now is hushed.

I take a few steps forward until I am standing on the rocks. With my hands, I sweep the thin sheet snow from the layer of ice. My fingers tingle because I’m not wearing gloves. Although the snow isn’t all off, I stop when my fingers turn red. Skating time! I step nervously closer to the pond. I lower one foot over the chunk of ice. I tread onto the pond with one foot still on the rocks. I carefully swing my other foot around and place it parallel to the foot already on the pond. I start to feel something happening beneath me. I quickly get my right foot off just in time but my left foot was not as lucky.

Craaack.
My foot is submerged in ice water and I just stand there. The numbness jolts through my leg like electricity. I stand there. My foot still engulfed in water. I stand there. Listening to the silence of nature sleeping. A branch from an evergreen lowers its snow to the Earth’s floor which is already cloaked in white powder. Just like the evergreen shedding its snow, I find the energy to raise my foot, drenched in a mix of ice and water, out of the pond. I sprint from the pond up the bitter steps, past the dozing oak, past the ice pool and the Japanese maple to the door that I swing open and throw my body inside.

I’m gonna need some hot chocolate!

~ Anna L.