“White snow sparkles like a million little suns.”
Snowflakes, still to this day, provoke memories that reach back and touch my childhood. Mother loved snow, she treasured it! She’d bundle me up until I looked like a small marshmallow and she would run to the front yard with me, smiling the whole way. She brought out a carrot and chocolate chips and some extra scarves and hats, and she told me to start forming a little snow ball while she gathered a few sticks. I gathered snow in my tiny hands. I would jump and let myself fall back in the billowing white around me, and my arms and legs would flutter back and forth in an attempt to leave a snow angel on the yard. But before long I would be staring, amazed, at the tall snowman Mother had formed out of my little snow ball. Together we laughed as we stuck the carrot and chocolate chips on the front to give the snowman a face, and the sticks on the side to give him arms. Then we tried all the scarves and hats on him until we found the perfect look. When our snow day was through we’d go back inside and Mother would wrap me in a blanket after removing my wet snow clothes. I waited by her side in the kitchen while she made each of us a cup of hot cocoa, with a mountain of white mini marshmallows on top of mine just like the mountains of white snow outside.
I remember thinking how snow was such a magical event. I would go to sleep in one type of world and wake up in an entirely different one. In middle school I was a very inquisitive student, and I would stand at my bus stop when it was snowing and stare up at the sky watching specks of white fly toward my face. I could do this for hours, just trying to figure out where the snowflakes were born. Where did they come from?
When it snows here at Granite Farms, it’s lovely. Pop always wore his sunglasses on our morning walks if there was snow on the ground because the reflection of the sun bouncing off of it made him squint. Snow is so bright and sparkly, so joyful. It’s especially lovely because the leaves fall off all the trees and leave only thin branches behind, and I can see for miles around me. I see miles and miles of beautiful white hills with glimmers of light dancing over them.
Being alone on a snowy white day makes me think. The snow is so calming to me. It falls so softly and it hushes nature, and everything around it becomes quiet. Sometimes I’ll take walks by myself on snowy days. I’ll think of Mother, and I’ll think of Pop. I’ll think of small, happy children drinking hot cocoa at their window while they look outside at their snowman.
Snow is like a clean sheet that just lets you reflect on anything you want to. I love to look closely at a patch of snow on the ground because when I do, I really can see it shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. And then when I look up, everything looks pure white again. I think it’s this way for a reason, because I think that’s how life is. Life is one big palette and it may not appear so wonderful from a far glance, but you have to look closer. You have to see how life shimmers with all the people and all the places and all the things that happen. When you look closely you’ll see so many colors. You’ll see so much beauty that otherwise may have gone unnoticed. If you take the time, you’ll see so much more than what you may have thought was there. It’s magical.