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.

November 1

I left the warm, dark house early this morning and ventured to class while the street-lights were still on and there was no one else awake. It was raining snow; that weird phenomenon where the snow comes straight down in curtains, in small particles like white raindrops, only everything is in slow motion. Absolutely dumping the stuff. It was incredibly peaceful, and when you stood still you could hear the snowflakes hitting leaves, trees, cars, the ground, with a very quiet tinkly sigh. Almost what you would expect a sparkle to sound like, if sparkles made noise.

Later in the afternoon I came home and it was still pouring out of the sky. I decided to shovel, because I couldn't see the sidewalk or the path to the front door, so I bundled in layers of scarves and sweaters and a winter coat and a toque, wool socks and my brothers old Sorrels which I stole when he moved to England. It was good to move in the cold, to feel my muscles tighten and release, to see my breath in the white air, to be warm from my heart pumping strongly. After, I sat on the steps and lifted my face to the trees and closed my eyes. There was the comforting smell of wet wool, and the sharp pure clean smell of fresh snow. My jeans were getting wet from the snow, and my butt was cold from the frozen stone stairs, but inside I was hot and comfortable. I sat in utter stillness for around half an hour, feeling the gentle tickle of flakes landing on my face, watching the snow fall in strands before me and around me, like a screen saver of stars, or fake rain in a low-budget movie. Soon, black-capped chickadees were in the branches of the trees beside me, and a black and white woodpecker with a red flash down its head was knocking around. There was no wind, nothing to drive leaves to the ground or blind you with ice. I wanted to sit there forever; I wanted it to snow like this forever, until I was nothing more than a giant pile of white. Until the entire world was a giant pile of white, the oceans and the deserts and the forests and the plains just covered in 6 feet of snow. Everything would perish, and yet it would still keep on raining down until the rent in the heavens closed for good and that's how it would remain, a giant ball of white snow floating through the black universe.