Frosty Fantasia

When I was a young girl, my family celebrated Thanksgiving at my Aunt and Uncle’s house. We lived on the eastern side of our Pacific Northwest state. Almost always it snowed, creating a magical veil to the upcoming wonder waiting on the other side; Winter. My cousins and I would emerge from the basement where we’d spend the after-hours of our celebration playing old 45s on a record player, board games, and ping-pong, to find white snowflakes falling softly in the glow of streetlamps. As Dad warmed the car and Mom said her long goodbyes, my sister and I wandered the quiet sidewalks making footprints. Each one (for me) is a wish for winter’s enchantment.

Every snowflake begins the same way. A tiny drop of moisture from a cloud freezes onto a pollen or dust particle. As it falls, water vapors freeze onto the existing crystal causing six arms to grow.

As an adult, I know the pressure I put on Winter’s season was unrealistic. I would declare each white snowflake a wish of realization, a gift of knowledge, a hope for my future. I absentmindedly put my fate in the icy hands of Winter. Somehow I believed it would cocoon me until Spring when I would be reborn as this amazing, talented young lady who earned perfect grades and knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life.

It never truly worked out that way, as you can imagine. Although to this day, with each snowfall, I’m still pulled to my moments under the streetlamps along my Aunt and Uncle’s street. There’s just something enchanting about ivory ice crystals dancing their long journey from the overcast sky to the glove of my hand. I’m transfixed under their spells, and always, always hopeful.

Atmospheric conditions play a major role in the creation of a snowflake. The wind blows each one in dance through different temperatures and humidity levels along its journey to Earth.

I suppose it’s like a bath of fateful wonder. Instead of a steamy bathtub with candles and soft music, I’m bundled in Northface with a pink nose on a silent night. Questions flood like a snowstorm, where am I headed next in life’s travels? What do I need to learn to become all I’m bound to be? What is it I’m being called to accomplish? What stories? What poems? What destinies await my short gift of life?

When I was a child I could stay out in the cold forever. Mom would decide when I’d had enough, my blue lips and white fingertips gave me no bother. Today, my baptisms of snowfall and wonder are shorter. I get colder easily, even in my layers. Even on the western side of the state where we can sometimes live through an entire season without any snow at all.

No two snowflakes are the same. Each crystal formation needs the perfect amount of cold moisture wind and time to become the exquisite and unique snowflake that it is.

And time; time is always, always of the essence these days. There’s much to do with my household, my family, my day job and writing. The older I get, the less time there is to accomplish everything… including writing all the ideas falling like their own snowstorm in my head. What if I can’t get it all done before my time here is gone? Will I find those crystal destinies promised all those years ago, under the veil of Winter, before my turn to melt away comes calling?

Well, of course, I’m hopeful. And so I write. I write every day that I can. I revise what I’ve written. Then sometimes I write it all again. As long as more Winters are before me, and snowflakes find their way to my soul, I will write.

Snowflakes all begin the same way. They all descend from clouds in the same sky, their same make-up of water molecules with one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. The oxygen end is negatively charged, while the hydrogen ends are positively charged, thus creating a hexagon when joined by neighbouring water molecules.

There are billions of people out there, many of whom wish to write. I am one of them. I don’t know my future, how much time I have, or if anything will come of anything I pen to paper. But I suppose I will continue my dance through Winter’s sky.

We all begin the same way and then are born into the world with the same needs for survival. It’s that landing that becomes unique and wide open for each of us to grasp. And for many of us, in the hustle and bustle of life, we forget. For me, it’s the turn of Fall to Winter that sets me straight. It’s when I emerge from the basement of preoccupation to greet the magic. It’s that moment when the snow first falls that I make my wish for a new, fresh start.

By the time snowflakes land on Earth, although side-by-side to others in their journeys down, each one is unique and special. Some are plated, and some are like needles or columns. Each one is symmetrical in shape, though original in style.