Snow Showers

It snowed on me on the way home tonight. It has been snowing off and on all afternoon, pretty snow, but not really sticking snow. I do not love the cold but oh how I love the snow. Snow globe snow is my favorite, big fluffy flakes that fall lazily down. I like it when it snows at night best, when the moon bounces off the snow and the night is so bright it is almost like day again. It's a wonderful magical time and it takes me back in my mind to my childhood. I have the sweetest memories of walking at night, dragging my sled behind me in the moonlight. The big pine trees around the house hanging heavy with mounds of deep white snow, listening to the silence except for the noise I was making. It was just like a hallmark greeting card or a Christmas special and I have often daydreamed about the magical quality of that night.

I also remember snow interrupting the plans I had on a number of occasions. I had been a part of a leadership team as a senior in charge of organizing a weekend retreat. I got the flu but I was determined to go. I was running a fever but I kept getting up and pretending I was well so my mom would let me go. We got so much snow that weekend and the temperatures were so low that the weekend had to be cancelled. My mother was a little too caustic when she said I could haul my sick body back to bed as the party was officially over. I can remember laying in bed in the sickness of the moment wondering if God had snowed us in so I wouldn't miss the weekend. I think I thought the world really did revolve around me in those days. I still wish it did but know better these days.

I remember kids and snow with great fondness. Once when we lived in Norfolk, I got up at 6:00 in the morning to go out with the kids and play in the snow. I got up so early to go play because I was afraid if we waited the snow would melt. Norfolk was not famed for it's snow fall so I thought we needed to play while we could. That day the snow continued all morning and into the afternoon and we ended up with nearly a foot. My yard was littered with snowmen, snowballs, snow angels, and millions of footprints. I thought we were having a once in a lifetime event. The following Friday we had the same thing!

I remember being in college, waking up on an April morning to see the ground was once again covered in white stuff. I couldn't believe we were having white stuff again. I was so upset I nearly cried. It had snowed so often that year that it had lost its romance and I was living in expectant hope every day that spring was just around the corner. When I woke up to more snow I was defeated and discouraged. This leads to me to the story of looking out the exact same window in college to discover that someone had moved a fellow's students belongings outside and placed them on the lawn just outside my window, neatly arranged as if it were a external room. And there sitting at his displaced desk was a fellow student, happily reading the newspaper at his desk. (This has nothing to do with snow but the two thoughts are so connected I had to share.)

It's good to have a trigger to revisit past history. I can see in the same event the various responses, so much a part of who I was at that point. The snow was always snow, it was me who's perspective changed. I think this is a tool I can learn to use more effectively in my never ending quest to navigate the seas of insanity with a small portion of my brain intact. Recognizing that how I respond to an event is not the event, its me that changes, ought to buy me enough space to view with a little more impartiality my reaction. I am not so convinced that I will always respond appropriately, but I am convinced that when I don't I ought to be able to see why.

I am off to the window, I have some serious snow searching to do!