The Jonas Blizzard came on smooth like a velvet blanket draping onto your lap as you sit in front of a fire. The restaurants down the street asked the locals to risk the “The Jonas Bonus,” a clever smile eliding over the fact that, once the plates have been cleared off the table and you have walked back to your apartment across the street, those waiters would have to drive home over white roads that sank beneath their tires. Snow plows were out in full force, taking to the corporate downtown districts in hordes of ten plows at a time – slow parades showered by nickel-sized snowflakes spinning down like confetti.

This was the day after the skies cleared, when the front door gets stuck against a frozen wall the  first time it swings outward.  All over the neighborhood, the shadows of seven-foot snow mounds slant at forty-five degree angles, and the contrast of the white snow and the black imprints of the blocked sun on the sidewalk make an emphatic yin-and-yang on the cleared walkways along the road.

Store parking lots were like mazes – being too big to clear out all at once, so guesstimated trails are hammered out of the whole. These paths were incredibly intentional, but only for the specific trip in which it was shoveled.  They branched away in pursuit of a faraway sidewalk, a car that was parked in a residential spot but is no longer there. Grocery carts are exactly where they were left three days prior, lost in the consecutive accumulation of a whole-weekend blizzard. I’m sitting in the basket of one of them, facing him as he runs full speed ahead.

The only thing I could tell is that, by the slogging noise of the wheels churning something thick, he’s breaking free from the cleared track someone made in the snow. All I see is the scruff of his face outlined by the beige hoodie, which is itself outlined by the cloudless blue sky above. Laughing, because I can’t see where he’s going. I can’t know much for sure right then, though, and I was thrilled by the mystery.

I’m reminded of something I read, that said that new parents are advised to only push rear-facing strollers for the first year or two after birth. A child needs to see the constant and familiar face of your love to be grounded. Facing away can be traumatic for them, because their understanding of object permanence has yet to develop . You’ve disappeared from them, and now the world is rushing over them at an unprecedented speed. It’s too much for them to process all at once.

Here I was, two years old and laughing like I’ve forgotten how to stop.

Because, really, I have.

Dealing with insecurity is a skill we learn and just as quickly forget over the course of a lifetime.

When the cart stops spinning, he takes ten steps back and starts filming.

“Try to get out of the basket!” he yells on-camera. I’m too big to do it gracefully, a stocky 27-year-old who has the limberness of an ex-runner and current cubicle worker. I’m self-conscious, but I am happy. The video captures everything: grunts, mumbling, the eventual panting from loss of breath. I recoil at the thought of it going online, but I am happy of the photographic proof that, today, I am happy.

I am happy for object permanence; I’m happy for losing control; and I’m happy for the powdery snow that blows off the roof of every building, because it feeds the illusion that the snowfall and this moment aren’t both already over.