First Snow

Winding down for the night, ready to veg out and catch up on some TV shows, my always even tempered husband begins to nearly yell at me, "Look! Get your shoes on! Get outside!" Were we under attack by a gang of college students furious about their math grades? Perhaps a pack of wild dogs? My mama bear instinct rose up, I must respond to his command and protect my child, protect ourselves. Confusedly I pull my shoes and coat on but instead of stepping out into an attack, we burst out into a flurry of passive snow flakes ambling from sky to ground in whatever path feels most convenient. The snow flakes were huge. Not tiny little centimeter-diameter-ed speacks, they were quarters and silver dollars floating down like feathers.


I am used to the days around Halloween being a significant weather change, a drop in temperature. But to me, that has always meant a switch from the mid-90's to maybe the mid-70's, just maybe down into the 60's at night. But from sunny, comfortable blue skies to snow in one day? Yes. It is real. We have moved.

The snow makes everything different. The green and yellow and red and orange array of colors all around us swiftly shift to white. But more than just color, or temperature, or wardrobe, my whole perspective of this place is altered. For weeks I have been responding, "I really like it here. I realize it hasn't snowed yet, but . . ." But now it has snowed. Now it is not just a beautiful wooded place whose leaves change color, spicing up the view for my daily walks. Now these people I've met are no longer quite people just like me. Now they are people who have lived in this for months on end. They are people with a world of expertise I can not begin to grasp yet. My neighbor ran up to me yesterday, "California neighbor!" urgently warning me about anti-freeze windshield wiper fluid I would need for my car, "You're going to need to get that TODAY." My naivete no longer inspires just a chuckle or widened eyes, it is a point for practical concern and transferring tangible instructions. I'm not just the new kid on the block, I'm the new kid in the snow, and I have no idea what I'm doing.

It is invigorating, inspiring, calming and peaceful all at once. When I went to my waking daughter this morning, instead of hurriedly responding to her urgent cries, we went to her window and I revealed to her the transformation of her view. Instantly quieted, her little jaw dropped and her eyes grazed the scenery before her. This is not as it was. We are not as we were. I have to raise her up to be a child with a whole skill set, a whole life style I have never even known myself. For years I have prepared to have a bi-racial child, but I did not know we would be a multi-climate family. This stirs up in me a whole new level of mommy-insecurities. I know she will adore the snow. She will yell at it with desirous excitement. She will react with hesitation at first, and then a moment later plunge into it with eagerness and abandon. She will get sick more often than she should because of my ignorance. I will always be second guessing walking out the door, wondering if it is better to dive in or protect. Dive in or protect. Back to my first reaction to the snow falling.

Instead of TV, we settled into the couch with hot cups of decaf coffee and cookies still so warm and gooey from the oven that they melt apart in my fingers. With all the lights off, we pull the curtains back and watch out the window. The scene before us seems so still, but the street lamps reveal the rush of activity. And the yard, the trees, the fence becomes softer and whiter as each moment passes. Softer and whiter. Softer and whiter.


p.s. one of the weirder moments of our first snow: just after we stepped out into the dark and couldn't believe our eyes and skin nerves, a horde of male college students came running down our street yelling weird indecipherable weirdness. Oh yeah, and they were wearing head to toe bunny costumes. ??


[Written Sunday, October 30, 2011]