i recalled other winters of the past and the joy of being snowed-in with my family , playing on the streets and hills around our house with all the kids and parents in the neighborhood , the way millie would gambol around us while we shoveled out our driveway , the enthusiasm with which she ran through deep snow , bounding across its surface , her endless , daylong energy , the way she slept from dinner on if she was allowed , exhausted and spent , her legs sometimes churning as she dreamed , i imagine , of still playing in the cold white drifts , floating through the neighborhood , possessed by nothing other than her simple-minded sense of belonging and being what she imagined was the center of attention on this new planet sculpted by strange , intensely single-minded masters from another world .