Sixteen hours' worth of traveling later, I made it home.  My dad, who braved a midwestern blizzard to retrieve me, woke me up as we pulled into the driveway at midnight.  Even at that dark hour, I could see the whiteness of the snow, glowing in the night like nature's sleepless eye. And this morning I awoke to a wonderland.  Winter's dangerous element is subtle and quiet and eerily soporific. When I look out the window now, in evening, I feel like I'm being carried away in a soft burlap sack that surreptitiously enveloped me while I was falling asleep, and rather than feeling alarmed, I'm lulled by it. 

Harvey showed up around midafternoon.  I was showering and heard a noise that I would have guessed to be an uncertain knock at the door if we didn't live way out in the boonies.  I ignored it and finished my shower.  As I was pulling on my clothes, my phone rang.  "Hello?"  I said.  "Ali, it's me.  I'm outside.  I think you're inside.  I heard you singing."  I ran down the stairs and threw open the door.  And there he was.  Shivering in jersey shorts, an oversized down jacket covering his cadaverous frame.  I threw my arms around him and pulled him out of the cold.  We watched Love&Basketball, fast forwarding the parts about love.  We talked only a little.  We hadn't seen each other in over five months, but I wasn't sure if he would be interested in the adventures I had had out in Boston.  We used to have that problem when we reunited after each semester of being away at separate colleges.  He wouldn't want to hear about my drunken fiascos, and Harvey, the straight-edge, wouldn't tell me what he did on the weekends because he said he thought it would put me to sleep and make me never call him again.  "I never call you anyways,"  I said.  "You just come over."  He grinned and shrugged.  It was kind of cute, and it made me feel bad for having said what I said.