Dear George,

Today, I went for my walk in the woods and I was not afraid of dying from racial profiling and police brutality. What I have the privilege to pay attention to is the peace and loveliness and freshness of the woods and meadows and brooks that surround me. And everything I saw that moved me became a picture I took in your memory.

Today Donald Trump said, “it’s a good day for George Floyd.” How could it be a good day for you? How can a person leading our country even imagine such a thing, let alone say it out loud to your family, your friends, our country? How can it be a good day for you when you are dead because you were murdered?

The lady slippers linger, tender and richly pink and puffy. There was a yellow bloom, a wildflower whose name I don’t yet know, that was splotched with clear drops of fresh rain. And snappers! Crazed egg layers, everywhere. One dug a hole, crawled under my daughter’s huge garden fence, crossed the garden, and dug a hole and laid her eggs in the garden. Because the land, the earth, the soil doesn’t really belong to humans. It belongs to all the creatures, and we need each other, every one.

I want to tell you I learned something today about snowballs, and the child-like, joy-some, mischievous pleasure of a good snowball thrown in winter. Snowballs thrown by black children are just as joyful as the ones thrown by white children. But they face different consequences for being thrown. I know you know this. But I got to thinking about it today when I listened to the NYTimes Daily Podcast, “Why They’re Protesting,” when one of the protesters, Donfard Hubbard, shared a story about throwing snowballs as a kid with his friends in Minneapolis. “When I was ten years old. . .nine of my friends. . .early evening, not dark yet, and the cops roll up, we scatter. Nobody wanted to have an interaction with the police. I ran about two blocks, cut through alleys, the cop zoomed by. . . backed up. . ..I stopped, I came back, he asked me what I was doing out there. . .we were having a snowball fight, and he was like, it’s getting late, you need to take your black ass home. I said what? You heard me, n——-. . . It sticks with you. Why did he talk to me like that?. . .”

I’ve always been a huge fan of Annie Dillard’s essays. I’ve read her essay, The Chase, a bunch of times, so when I heard Donfarb say snowball fight, I immediately remembered Dillard’s classic story about a group of friends throwing snowballs, and hitting a car, a black Buick, and the owner chases Dillard, as a girl, and a friend, Mikey, through alleys and alleys, and finally catches them. It’s a glorious essay about the joy of childhood mischief, the consequences––yes, they get caught by the man. He calls them stupid kids. They don’t take it to heart. Why should they? They were caught, but they won the chase. They got this man to chase the hell out of them, and it was a thrill:

If in that snowy backyard the driver of the black  Buick had cut off our heads, Mikey’s and mine, I would have died happy, for nothing has required so much of me since as being chased all over Pittsburgh in the middle of winter—running terrified, exhausted—by this sainted, skinny, furious red-headed man who wished to have a word with us. . .

~ Annie Dillard, excerpt from “The Chase,” from An American Childhood

So, snowballs in June, George. That’s what I was thinking about, in honor of you, today.