A Note About Snow, for My Father

Four years ago today, my father (Butler Shaffer, for those who don’t know him) left this earth. I still haven’t fully accepted that he is no longer here, and there is a part of me that doesn’t believe it at all.

It is snowing today here in Lexington, just a little, and so I am going to post this passage, from Essays in Idleness, the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko, because I think my dad would have appreciated it:

One morning after a pleasant fall of snow I sent a letter to someone with whom I had business, but failed to mention the snow. The reply was amusing: “Do you suppose that I shall take any notice of what someone says who is so perverse that he writes a letter without a word of inquiry about how I am enjoying the snow? I am most disappointed in you.” Now that the author of that letter is dead, even so trivial an incident sticks in my mind.