Let It Snow

For the first time this season, snow carpeted the neighborhood. The night sky glowed with pastel tones of pink and purple. Memories swirled with the sharp winter winds, taking me back to the winters of my past; the snowmen, the sleds, the monstrous hills which hurled us towards the bottom at life-threatening speeds. There were winters with little snow and ugly speckled blotches of green grass, which if appearing around Christmas would nearly spoil it (if not for the redeeming grace of Christmas simply being Christmas). There were winters in which snow banks towered over our wool-laden heads, when the steam that rose off our skin after another day's adventure fascinated and entertained us, when the scalding hot chocolate burned the living daylights out of our tongues, but what did we care, anyway. We've grown, and while some of us cling relentlessly to the joys of winter, there's the undeniably growing cynicism we swore we'd never adopt.

We can't help but occasionally loathe the snow, the clogged traffic, the cosmic slowing of an otherwise active life, yet we hardly recall the message it begs us to retain. While I'm driving two miles an hour down a road I usually go sixty, while sparkles of white spread across the landscape, the last thing I should be doing is cursing. Granted, I'd probably be late (and I was), but on that road going two miles an hour, I remembered what winter used to mean, what it should still mean. I remembered the smells of peppermint and pine that drifted throughout the house as Christmas took its dear sweet time in arriving. I remembered the faint glow of the Christmas lights as they shone through the mountains of snow atop the bushes. True, there's nothing stopping me from remembering such things whenever I want, but I'm willing to believe it's a bit easier - if not more rewarding - doing it in the midst of a blizzard than at the Dairy Queen in mid-July.

There's a reassuring quality about winter, or any season in general. We take comfort in the fact that every year is another to remember, and though times might be tough (which is why we have yellow snow), memories never escape us - especially those lured out by giant floating tufts of crystalline water ice, or, as I like to call it, snow.