For the first time since 1895

While I am writing to you, snow dances lazily, outside my bedroom window. I see gusts of white-capped snow waves rolling off the top of our neighbor’s roof. I can’t tell the sky apart from the strip mall’s roof beside us.

I feel as if I am in a snow globe that has been collecting dust for years, forgotten on a high shelf. Today, an imaginative hand brings us down, wipes us free of our heavy burden of dust, and gives us a shake. The world turns white, an internal music box chiming inside us, igniting warmth in our hearts and making us smile without thinking.

When they say “wonderland,” I now understand. It is a wonder to watch snow. The tiniest of snowflakes stick together, making ever-larger ones, and pile weightlessly atop one another. They instantly brighten the world, covering the filth of humanity and transporting us to a playground anew. It’s a transformation of our home and our minds, sending our imaginations and inner child free. It’s a new world outside. Water behaves so differently in this state of matter, yet somehow, it is just as healing as a tumbling brook or crashing wave.

Before our first cup of coffee, my husband and I ran outside, making bootprints 6 inches deep and giggling as I stumbled around. It’s been falling for hours now, and there has to be almost a foot of snow in some places. I didn’t realize I knew so little about snow. The fresh mounds of powder fall through my gloved fingers like the lightest sand. We can’t pack the snow together yet for proper snowballs or snowmen.

My goal of catching a snowflake on camera has been achieved. (See picture 1 in the gallery directly above.)

The squeaking crunch underfoot is satisfying. My footprint leaves an icy mold behind, only to be filled in completely just a half hour later. Its sound-absorbing properties give the world pause, as if time itself is frozen. There is no traffic, very few people outside, and no one working in the businesses around us.

Pure white, pure silence. I can hear the tip-tapping of each snowflake as it lands on my coat. The piled snow weighs down the thin tarps over my garden bed, and I worry that the rosemary might not make it after all. Sparrows fly about in a panic, wondering where their perches have gone under several inches of fluffy white.

I will cry when it’s gone. How special it is to experience such a gift as a fresh, day-long snowfall in a usually warm, swampy state. We won’t soon forget this day.

I am left with the thoughts, “Is this really real?” and “Can we get just one day like this every year?”