be ready for magic at any time

If a certain man in my household and I hadn't been having a certain somewhat heated discussion and he hadn't walked over to the window and peeped through the blinds, for no reason really than pure distraction, we would not have seen the late night snowfall. Oh, it stuck long enough to still be around, thin and icy and beginning to melt, when we woke this morning, but last night's rained-on snow is never so enchanting as right now's surprising magic falling from the sky. We pulled the miniblinds all the way open and moved our conversation to beside the picture window. The mood shifted and the volatile situation diffused; we reached a calm and a peace that I don't think we would have found if we hadn't seen the snow. He went on to bed and the boy (who has been sick, off and on and mostly on for the past several days and not really sleeping so much at all) and I kept crouching by the window, watching. And even though it was almost midnight, I tiptoed in to my daughter's room, held her little brother up to her bed (a high loft bed and I can't even see her sleeping form unless I climb up the laddder myself) and he said, in a hushed but excited voice, "wake up! see snow!" and she woke up, confused, blinked at us, screwed up her face and took a moment to make sense."wake up! come see snow! snow outside now!" and then her whole face flashed with understanding and she scrambled down the ladder and tripped to the living room. we stood there, the three of us, for a long time, just being quiet together.