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Any snowfall which brings traffic to a standstill and closes schools takes me back to one particular storm in my youth on the shores of Lake Area. On that day, schools and stores were closed because of the weather. What resonates for me is a six-block walk I took with my father from our house to the post office. He bought me stamps for my recently started stamp collection. I already had a wild assortment of cancelled stamps from around the world. He brought me brand-new stamps. I can retrace the route in my mind, walking on snow-covered sidewalks and streets. It was unusual to be going for a walk with my father on a weekday and so close to home. In the following years, I never talked about that walk with him, I never even thought about it until it appeared to me about a decade ago. A winter memory now returned to the forefront. The elderly are said to be in the winter of their lives, and winter is synonymous with the end of life. That does not make the winter the Grim Reaper; rather, it is a time of reflection in those for whom childhood is long gone. My father died in the summer of 1997. For me, his final months resembled the patterns of settling in for winter, | 
