Mascara of Snowflakes

It snowed and I'm happy

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With luck, it might even snow for us.

— Haruki Murakami

It finally snowed—big dollops of cold white glittery softness. I walked to get dinner when it was still falling. Snow everywhere, including on my eyelashes. When I got near home, I laid down and made a snow angel. This is the weather I connect with most. I like the ambiance, the quiet, the cold, the coziness. I like seeing the branches blanketed. I like seeing twinkle lights peak out from underneath it. I like snow because it makes me feel like magic is afoot (and it usually is).

snowflakes on my eyelashes!

As a cancer rising, I used to think it was odd that I had no real “love” for water. I mean, I enjoy water (oceans, lakes, ponds, etc), but I didn’t feel grounded by it. I only just realized my connection to water is through snow. Of course it is. Of course.

As a child, I played in it joyously. On an old home video, my dad asks me, “Bissy¹, aren’t you cold?!” I stood defiant in my pale pink snowsuit. “NO!” my tiny voice beamed. I could stay outside for hours in it making tunnels, snowballs, and snow angels. My dream world felt opened by a fresh snowfall. I usually would not go inside the house on my own. My parents would need to collect me. I wanted to live in snow.

my most recent snow angel

My love of snow has never wavered. I’ve fallen in it hundreds of times, but it cocoons me. I have been in car accidents during it, but I still can’t hate it. I have had trips cancelled due to its limitless strength, and just thought, “That’s how snow works sometimes.” I’m more able to cease control when there is snow on the ground. I’m more able stay soft. I somehow feel better knowing that frozen water is carpeting everything around me. I know I’m weird for this. I know this is odd. But I don’t care and neither does snow.

I keep wondering when I might hate snow; when I might find it more inconvenient than pretty; more precarious than magical. I keep waiting to see if I “age” out of this love. I’m almost 40 and it hasn’t happened yet. My mom is 74 and she still has not “aged” out of her love for snow.

Perhaps there are some of us who will always see snow as unbounded magic and possibility.

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1. “Bissy,” “Bis,” “Bissa” is a family nickname. It began because my older brother couldn’t say “Lachrista,” so he said “Labista,” thus “Bis,” and so on and so forth.