At first it was spring rains, light falls that promised growth and renewal. We sent our children out to dance in it—see if you can get to the oak and back without your hair getting wet!—and we welcomed them back with fluffy towels and stories of the bulbs that would burst into bloom in the coming weeks. And the tulips did rise, but the rain did not stop. The summer thunderstorms arrived, with their sallow clouds that gathered into swirling, bruised epitaphs on the horizon, swinging sheets of warm rain down relentlessly. We measured how far open the windows could be and still keep out most of the wet; we learned how fast sundresses could get soaked through, a brief moment under the open sky enough to slick your curves so smooth as to be indecent. The year faded to autumn with no respite, through the swirling fear-filled tornado season when all rain felt like an omen, and into the bluster of the self-important fall rains. Grey raindrops filled the horizon interminably, fat and cold and pointed, each drop a reminder to get ready for winter, get ready for the cold. They eddied with the red and yellow leaves in the gutters, tiny bright rivers that washed color down the drains. And winter came on gradually, because the rain would not give way: we hovered on the edge of freezing for weeks, fogging windows up with our breath and noses and hands as we watched the frigid rain sleek down out of the turgid sky. Then the day came when the downfall seemed slowed, more meandering, and the drops paler and paler till snow finally arrived, a heavy and dense snowfall that gathered immediately in sidewalk crevasses and potholes and bricks. We wrapped the children up and let them wander through it, drunk with change and wonder, letting the crystals fall into their open pink mouths, melting in all the places on their coats where their bodily warmth seeped out. When we called them in an hour later, it was clear that the snow had no intention of abating, so we left the hearth burning and divvied up shoveling shifts. For weeks now the snow has been omnipresent, the management of it the center of our lives: frozen several feet deep, we have paths that look more like tunnels, from the front door to the street, each hole on the street a portal to our neighbors’ lives. I wonder what the coming months will mean, if it never lets up; I wonder if we will be sunk entirely.