So it is supposedly spring, but as I look out my window, I see snow falling over the tree branches. Oh, what warm spring weather we are having, Mother Nature! Or is this your joke? This bitter cold chill in the air makes me think of all the warm, cozy practices I thought I had shelved until next year. Things like drinking hot chocolate while curled up on the couch with a good book, having a fleece blanket wrapped around my legs, or turning up the heat in the fireplace. While I do yearn for spring and summer, I still love the melancholy mood a good snow flurried day can bring.
I imagine everybody has good memories that are spurred from moments like these, where you look outside and remember the excitement you felt as a child when it snowed. It doesn’t feel like we have had snow quite like we did when I was a kid. Back then it seemed like it was at least a foot or two deep instead of the mere dustings we seem to have now. My brother and I would dress up in two and three layers of sweatshirts, long johns, mittens and scarves to brave the cold. We played for hours until our toes were numb and our stomachs growled with hunger. Then after a quick lunch of hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, we put our wet gloves back on and rushed back out where the neighbors waited to make the next great snowman!
Once, my dad, a big kid himself, took a pot outside and stuffed me inside to push me down the biggest hill on our street. He just knew that pot would be slick enough for me to race down the hill on. But unfortunately, there was no racing down the hill, just hands, elbows, and feet flying wildly as I tumbled right down the steep bank. Looking back on that memory, it seems silly that a pot would work, but it is the fondness of those types of memories that warm my heart on such a cold day.
The allusive “they” always say that no
snowflake is the same. That is the way I feel about memories. Each one can conjure up an array of emotions and reactions each time they surface. The smile one can bring to our lips or the sadness seen in our eyes are all products of a brief moment in time and our perception of that moment.
I smile every time I see the snowfall because I associate it with that quick tumble down the
hill and the fun that was had that day. I like to sit on my couch sipping my hot chocolate gazing out the window and remembering a time that now seems so far away, but so near to my heart that it fills me with warmth. I’m so glad I have those moments to dwell on from time-to-time. A part of childhood I recapture for a brief second. And I relish in the thought that at some point I will share those memories with my own children, or better yet, make memories that they themselves will look back on with the same smile and warm glow on some cold Spring day.
