The Day the Ice Melted

Every year, she’d come out here and walk around the perimeter, wishing she had the courage to walk out on the surface the way it seemed everybody else did. They skated around on the pond like they had no care in the world and fear was something they had only heard about from horror movies. It wasn’t something that lived in and consumed their hearts the way it did for Josephine. She longed to venture out onto that ice and spin, twirl and pirouette like the last remaining dried up leaves from the summer before that just gave up their grip on the old phase of their lives, swirling through the air to the next step in their adventure. Oh, to let go so completely the way those leaves did. How she envied those former light-absorbers.

She would come down here every day the weather would allow and watch all the other kids having fun, laughing, skating, twirling, playing, smiling up at the sky with the sun on their faces, while she sat there, silently wishing, fighting an internal battle that no one could win for her. She would look out at that ice and see the sky reflected in it, admiring the clouds drifting wherever the wind took them, floating up there like a painting hand-curated by god.

As she’d stare at that thick sheet, she’d sometimes find her mind drifting beneath, wondering about the world underneath that frozen top layer. Occasionally, she dreamt of breaking through, swimming down below and investigating that underwater world. She imagined that they swam freely, seemingly without a care, not unlike the way the children up above moved and lived. She wondered if they ever wondered about the creatures up above that made the shadows that made their way down into that watery existence. She thought about the frogs that might be down in the mud, along with some bugs, in just the right state that allows them to survive these long bitter months. She would note how they have to adapt to make it through in the ever-changing world around them. She wished it were this easy for humans to evolve and transform this dramatically, but instead, she notices that humans seem to be incapable of change in any real measurable amount more than that which would cause them only the least objectionable amount of discomfort.

Maybe if this weren’t the case, Josephine muses, she would be able to overcome her naturally fearful personality to push herself to do something new and different. She wants to be that person who does something spontaneous, or even something just a little bit scary to her, that most people find easy. But it’s getting a bit chilly, soon enough the sun will be setting, so she takes one last deep breath of the wintry air, gets up, and heads home to make a large mug of hot cocoa to wash down all the cold she has inhaled over the past several hours. Just as she always does.

That was the last day she spent down at the pond that December. After that, she couldn’t bear the pain of the attempt and the inevitable sense of failure with which it left her. Even if the fresh, crisp air she breathed in during that time was what rejuvenated her and made her feel alive. Even if the life above, below, and on the ground was what gave her hope and kept her creative juices flowing, moving around in her mind like the skittering of the winter hares and other fuzzy mammals who were prepared for the cold, wearing their winter coats. She couldn’t bear what her own mental blocks did to her when she spent time there.

Today, when she looks out on that frozen pond, she sees her past reflecting back at her, but rather than letting it consume her like she always has before, as would be her typical inclination, she came here to finally put it behind her. This February, she is not the person she was back then. Today she is going to take that first step. Josephine spins on that ice like a gold medalist. Any of the air, land and water creatures that may have been watching that day would have never known how hard this was for her, how much inner work it had taken, if they hadn’t remembered their old friend and her days at the pond like it was yesterday. Today is a special kind of sunshiny day, with the sun at its highest point in the sky, the joy that was destined for this day could be felt in the air. She is truly something beautiful out there on the ice - without a care in the world, laughing and smiling up at the sky with the sunshine on her face as she spins around and leaps through the air - now that she finally lets herself be.