Snow

Wednesday afternoon I heard rumors of snow that might fall that night as I typed away in a small corner of the library in that small town in Texas. It was quaint, how they spoke of it as such a phenomenon. And frankly, I just didn’t want to get my hopes up so I put it out of my mind.

And then I woke up Thursday morning to this white, fluffy, heavy, beautiful snow. We all dressed as fast as we could before the sun could even manage an escape from behind the dark of early morning.

There was throwing and running and slipping and laughing.

And it seems silly, I know, to get so excited over a form of precipitation.

But for a brief moment that morning I saw my own children run and play amidst the background of much of my own childhood, making memories so much like my own. A father in a big furry hat and a large red beard chasing them through the snow, their laughter ringing out like bells. Coming in soaked from the snow, warming and drying out by the heat of a wood stove, their parents never fully relenting to their desire to get back out. It is all so familiar.

Then the sun came through the clouds and that blinding brilliance I remember so well surrounded us.

It left us as quickly as it came – a full 48 hours later the snow was gone. But I will treasure those moments and memories of them in the snow, much as I do the memories of my own childhood amidst the backdrop of big fluffy white flakes.