I had for my winter evening walk —
Robert Frost, poet, from: “Good Hours.”
No one at all with whom to talk,
But I had the cottages in a row
Up to their shining eyes in snow.”
We had our first snowfall here after three years of barren winter months. Many, including my husband, delight in watching the gentle flakes drift from the sky and collect in a blanket of white over the dullness of the earth. As I observe the snow collecting, inch by inch, I shiver. Not just because of the cold beyond my walls, but because most of my childhood memories of winter are not about beauty and fun. I see the cold, I see the darkness, I worry about the ice on the roads, and my shoulders instinctively tense.
Living in New England for more than the first half of my life, I eventually tired of the long winter months, the short and frigid days, driving to work over many miles that doubled, sometimes tripled, in travel time due to the dicey road conditions, including the blizzards that greeted me on my way home.
Despite my lack of excitement and interest in this season that I view as a wall between the end and the beginning of garden season, I try to recall pleasant memories. Like when my sister and I would spend hours outdoors in the snow’s depths, constructing massive tunnels and forts; or rolling tiny balls of snow into tight, large mounds that we would climb and claim as our personal horse (with small heads) since we couldn’t afford the real thing. We would watch them slowly melt long after the rest of the snow was gone, and we were well into spring. Or swiftly sledding down our hill with the challenge to stop before we drifted into the street below.
Afterwards, we came inside to drink hot chocolate and eat baked goods while we warmed our tingling fingers. We played so hard we never noticed how cold we were until we sat by the fireplace which soothed and thawed our numb face and legs.
It wasn’t until my late teens that I noticed the seasonal depression. Or when I started driving to jobs, most of which were 50 miles away, in the snow and ice, and had several near misses over the years. It is a wonder I had not experienced worse accidents than the time I braked heavily on the highway during an ice storm and like a ping pong ball bounced from snowbank to snowbank before stopping partway in the ditch. My car did not have a scratch. Although I recall a rattling noise.
And then there are the memories, the events, I prefer to leave buried beneath the snow.
Yet despite the negative emotions that instantly creep within, I cannot help but still marvel at the natural beauty the snowfall brings. Like the intricate snowflakes of which no two are alike. They land on the window, and I observe their design before they swiftly melt and drip. Or when the vast whiteness reflects the moonlight and brightly shines the neighborhood without need of streetlights.
And my favorite—the hush that accompanies a snowfall. It is then a calm settles within me and invites me to focus only on pleasant memories.
In the end, we can choose to allow negative memories to sour our outlook. But perhaps if we look for something surprisingly wonderful from it, a hidden charm, then maybe that will help us cope with and heal from something we cannot always control. In turn, that beauty might give us something fascinating to write about.
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