From the bedroom, I overheard Dennis telling her that horses have lived outside since The Dawn of Time, it's their natural habitat, and that they would be just fine in the pasture. After all, he said, they have a nice loafing shed to keep them dry. Don’t worry, J., they’re OK. Somewhat placated, she padded into our bedroom, where Matilda-the-apparently-not-so-tenacious-heeler was trembling beneath the four-poster bed, and kissed me goodnight again.

This morning, I have to practically excavate her from beneath the mound of blankets into which she’d gone spelunking last night, half expecting to find quivering Matilda there too. Across the hallway, her brother, 8-year-old C., lies wide awake in his bed, watching sheets of snow billowing outside his bedroom window, his bedtime reading, an illustrated book The Spartan Warriors, sprawled facedown on the patchwork coverlet.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“I opened my blinds last night and turned off my night light.”

“Wow,” I am genuinely surprised, because C. never sleeps without his night-light. “Why’d you do that?”

“So I could see the lightning.”

Overnight, the thunder and lightning has turned into snow. My breath is short dragon puffs as I crunch crunch down to the pasture in the winter boots I was going to put away over the weekend. Somehow I just didn’t quite make it to that chore.

I crane my neck to look up at a vast gray sky burgeoning with snow. When things are big and scary, you can hide from them or you can look them straight in the face. I’ve done them both. This April morning is a blank slate, a pure white realm of possibilities.

The horses are all lined up at the gate, all six just fine.

Flickr photos: Dan65 ; Hello Doodle! ; Dan65