The driveway is a composite of crushed snow and rusty nails waiting for my tires.

It's been a long week. A week of grumpy roofers, who I did not ask to replace my roof in the snow in January, but who are replacing my roof, in the snow, in January.

She is an old house. She is loving and warm, though her joints ache more than they used to when the weather turns cold. I did not give her this old roof. For the decade I've lived under her she has kept me more dry than worried. But age finds cracks in time.

October's is-that-a-weird-shadow, turns into a that-definitely-wasn't-there-before spot, to hand wringing quick patches, to an cacophony of leaf blower wielding roofers hammering their lamentations into the downy fluff of January.

I did not ask my roof to leak. I did not ask the roofer's to come in the cold and the snow. Yet here we are.

But even in this there is magic. As I stand in the mocking snow my eyes fall on a new, dry roof. The labor for this roof paid for with labor of my own.

My job is a form of magic. I have dreams and ideas, electrons bouncing around in my head, which I take out and put form to. My half remembered childhood creek beds, transmute into the pungent ammonia/grass froth of a living indigo vat staining leather an inky blue. Which then gets molded into an object of art a weary traveler might rest their tired keys in, and for a moment think of the beach, or rain, or who they were when they bought it, filled with a little spark of half remembered childhoods of their own.

From one form to another, those electrons hop, passing from my mind, to the hands of another, to eventually the roof over my head, born from a dream I had once while I slept under it.

While I could stand here seeing the frustration, the cost, the worry of this roof, I instead make a choice. I choose to see magic. When I walk from the garage to the house I look up at my dreams made manifest, covered in a light dusting of snow.

In this too there is magic.