Snowflakes

Because I have lived the entirety of my life in Michigan, Winter and I have become well acquainted; I know to expect her incessant, bone-chilling wind and she knows to expect my rejection. I know that she has some redeeming qualities, while she knows there will be days when I can enter her world without shuddering.

The travel bug and I are familiar with one another as well. He normally takes me to places where the Sun dries up every ounce of moisture within its reach, places where Winter has no authority. Each Fall for the past several years, the idea of living permanently in Arizona or California has spread its roots deeper in to my daydreams, as I dread Winter’s annual visit and search frantically for a cocoon far from her grasp.

I woke up at seven o’clock this morning, my body just a little bit chillier than normal. I opened my shades to let in natural light which, during that painful transfer of power from my subconscious to my conscious, is so much more tolerable than a light bulb. I stood transfixed before the window, staring out in to sky overwhelmed with snowflakes. Not the tiny, indistinguishable-from-rain type of flakes, but the enormous, intricate, breath-taking ones. The kind that whoever it is that creates props for films would spend hours trying to replicate, so that the scene where boy wins back girl in a whirlwind of chance meeting could be perfectly set. I didn’t notice the cold so much anymore, didn’t feel upset that Michigan had held me in its grasp for one more Winter visit. Romantic snowflakes, peaceful snowflakes, swirling about in the kind of wind you can hardly feel but always hear.

Winter sparked wonder in me today.