I am not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
I remember when I was a child and those cold days of winter would wrap my home in an icy grip. I would awaken and huddle under the covers, somehow sensing the change in the air; that tell tale scent, new and fresh, of snow as it fluttered silently toward the ground. I lay there, listening to the radio as the announcer listed the school closings for the day, crossing my fingers, a prayer in my head; a litany.
PLEASE, let them list my school. PLEASE.
It was a longing for freedom that burned within me. An escape from the monotony of every day life. A chance to break free of my classroom...my prison.
And I had those days. Those sweet soothing afternoons covered in glitter when the only line that separated the blinding white of the sky from the crystalline white of the snow was a row of swaying fragrant pine trees watching over me. Snow forts and snowmen and snowball fights. Tinkling giggles exploding through silent reverence as I fell onto my back and waved my limbs; snow angels. The frozen tingle as I caught a snowflake on my tongue and let it burst there...bloom along the tip as I ran it across my lips. Awaiting that moment when my mother would call me in for hot chocolate with both anticipation and dread.
The sun would hang above me, a white-gold sphere of light and hope, and the trees would whisper that this was freedom. This was renewal. This was a moment to be savored.
I thought, at the time, that I did savor it. I thought that those moments had been sufficiently treasured. I thought that, if I really tried, I could hold those moments forever frozen in time and that they would sustain me.
But I was a child. When you're young, it seems as if the world will go on forever as it is and that, no matter what else happens in your life, there will always be another snow day on the horizon...another moment of release. And, in that certainty, memories fade. You don't think of the past while you're looking to the future and, before you know it, you've forgotten the exact way the snow dazzled sunlight felt on your face or the taste that bloomed across your tongue or the words whispered by the trees as they swayed in the glittery frost that covered them like a blanket.
The feeling of it begins to dissipate nearly as soon as you peel off the protective layers of coat and sweater and boots. By the time you are safely huddled in a chair beside the hearth, the images of it have blurred to nothing in the brightness of the flames. You sip your hot chocolate and press your face against the cold glass of the living room window, watching the snow melt and fall from the limbs of the trees. And you let go of that feeling.
Because there will always be another time, another memory, another snow day, another chance for freedom.
But, there isn't.
There just...isn't.
