Snow Flurries and Memories

We had some snow flurries a couple of days ago which I watched with relish outside my office window. My three co-workers groaned. But I was almost giddy with excitement. I know, I'm sick. But snow has some wonderful and rare lovely childhood memories for me.

Every winter, for the first snow of the season, my dad would come into my younger sister's and my room, and wake us with these words, "Girls, it's snowing outside." My sister and I...well, okay, my sister required twelve hours of sleep every night, so it was really just me...would bound out of bed to the window to look out on the glistening moonlit wonderland that blanketed the yard, icicles hanging like crystal shards from the trees and feel the vision pull my thoughts into a fairytale world. Sometimes I would open the front door and breathe in the cold air, filling my lungs to capacity, then watch the cloud of white as I exhaled. The sight of the first kiss of winter filled my head and I held it until the next time because by the time I returned to bed and got up again, an animal - perhaps a pet or something wild - had trampled it and the enchantment was gone.

I also love the quiet of a good snowstorm. I haven't experienced that much since becoming an adult and moving from the country into a city, but if it's late enough or snowy enough to drive everyone indoors come evening, I can lose myself in that muted silence that only the snow covered world produces.

Snow evokes thoughts of bundling up in warm clothes, sledding down steep hills, snowman building, sipping hot chocolate. My eyes drift westward to spy the snow capped mountains I've grown up around almost my whole life. It brings back memories of taking my now twelve year old daugther outside when she was a toddler to look for footprints in the snow and guess what animal - or human - made them, to compare our own to each other, to taste it on our tongues. I love the winter unequivocally. I prefer it to any other season, though I also enjoy the spring and fall months. But winter just has something special. I can hardly wait for the first "real" snow - the stuff that sticks and stays a couple of hours before the sun warms it away. And the best part? It's just around the corner.