“Do you like those boots?” My friend asks, as we start to walk towards the woods.

“I do,” I say, kicking my right foot up a little, dropping the heel in the snow so I can look adoringly at the tip of my toe.

“I bought them before we moved here. They were the only snow boots I could find in Georgia. Ironically, I’ve never found another pair here that I like quite as much. These are just so—” I pause, searching for the right word in my head—“Beautiful,” I sigh, “And warm too. Look at all that fur inside!”

She kicks up her boot and says “These are great boots, but they don’t really keep my feet warm. They are more for rain than snow.”

“You’ve lived in New England your entire life, and yet you don’t have a good pair of snow boots?”

“I’ve just never really found the time to go look, you know?”

“Oh, I know. Finding good snow boots is not the easiest thing to do. I kind of lucked out when I found this pair on the clearance aisle at Nordstrom Rack in Atlanta more than five years ago. Who knew I’d never see a pair like them ever again?”

We start to walk through the woods and I notice that there’s more snow on the ground than I thought there would be. Three of our four kids head back towards the house to get a sled, the other one runs up ahead to throw rocks onto a frozen pond.

In the rare quiet moment we’ve found ourselves in, my friend turns to me and says, “So what were you working on today?”

It used to be that I’d invite people over to sit around and drink tea while our kids played outside. It’s these everyday moments of friendship that I miss most in these pandemic times.

Now, we meet up for a hike as often as we can, bundled and masked, soaking up the few moments of conversation we can get. Our time together may not last for hours like it used to, but on these cold and dreary days of late winter, I’m so grateful for every single moment that we get.