Saturday Snow

Last Saturday night, as the grungy dusk faded to dark, the drizzling rain turned to snow. It was the most magical snow I had seen all winter- giant flakes wafting down, half-melted before they stuck to your hair. Because there was no wind they didn't blow sideways, they didn't swirl energetically, they didn't attack like an icy menace. They were very in-the-moment snowflakes, if that can be a thing.
I was walking fast along a deserted street downtown, and my friend and I (though both mature adults most of the time, I swear) couldn't stop laughing when we looked at each other with our fluffy white, quickly sopping wet hair. It was like walking through one of those plastic beaded curtains that you used to put over your doorway, that's how physical each flake felt when it hit you.

I used to have a beaded doorway thing, and so did my brother and sister. Dani and I had flowers, and Joel had round smiley faces. I remember that my friend Allison had one, and it made me want one so badly, and I had to beg and beg my parents to let me get one, which they were reluctant to do because they thought (and looking back, rightly so) that they looked tacky. We drove to Chinatown to get them, I think, and bought them in some grungy, fluorescent-lit toy store. The novelty of having to push through strands of plastic flowers every time I wanted to enter my bedroom obviously faded quickly, and soon the 3 of us got inventive in ways of tying them back out of the way, or making "curtains" out of dividing the strands into two bundles. When we sold our house in White Rock and came to Edmonton, they mysteriously never survived the move. Thank goodness.