I found myself wondering on my walk home tonight. I was wondering who doesn't like snow?
It is perfect, clean, soft, white, crisp, icy, powdery, wonderful, billowing snow. I find it impossible to stay in whatever foul mood I've been in, whatever funk I've sunk into, when it snows. When the soft white flakes come swirling from above, I can not possibly dwell on whatever I've been dwelling on. I feel better. Buoyant. Uplifted. I feel happy when it snows.
It covers everything that is dirty, everything that is ugly, everything that is dead and makes it all sparkle with magic. It takes away whatever was wrong the night before. It makes me feel like I can do anything.
Where I grew up it didn't snow too often, but I just knew, the moment I opened my eyes in the morning, that there was snow on the ground. Everything was muffled, quiet, and peaceful. The world felt safe. And where I grew up, I never heard the scraping of snow shovels or the whine of snowblowers. The city came to a screeching halt, all for the sake of the snow. It was sacred and special. My brother and I would go through every mitten, glove and sock in the house playing with the snow. Making snowballs, snowmen, snow angels and anything else worthy of snow. We made a snow bunny when we had a huge blizzard on Easter. We had snowball fights in high school. We longed for snow up to our knees, but it very rarely happened.
Now I live in a place where the plows come out in droves, like slow lumbering mechanical beasts. They push the beautiful white snow to the side, making great grey and black banks of ice and dirt. Now my neighbors are up at 5 in the morning salting and scraping their walks. Now there is no reverence for the snow. We grumble about it. Get angry at the icy slush it becomes. Frown at the forecast. Wish for summer.
Except, maybe, me. I long for it. I hope it never quits snowing. I hope it works those plows to death. Breaks every shovel and blower. Gobbles all the salt and ice melt. Foils everyone's evil plans to destroy the white blanket Mother Nature has seen fit to wrap us in.
I woke up the other morning to a perfect world of white. I was alone in a quiet house, no one else around. No one driving down the street. No one asking me anything or telling to me get ready let's go some where. I looked outside to find deer eating the bark from the trees. Squirrels running up and down branches. Geese sleeping in fields. And I knew everything would be okay. Whatever was wrong would go away. Would fix itself. This really is one of my favorite things: a silver white winter that will melt into spring.
I look outside to make sure the fat white flakes are still swirling to the ground. I am thinking of taking a walk. I am going to find an empty street somewhere and put my hands out at my sides, look up into the un-ending grey sky, and twirl around with the flakes landing on my pink cheeks and forehead. For a few minutes, I am going to fly.
If you see me out there somewhere, feel free to join me. Or at least stick out your tongue and let a perfect snowflake melt there and make all well.
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