A First Snowfall

After stepping outside where suddenly the warm air escapes your lungs and leaves you crisply breathless from the cold…

I just found an old journal entry of mine from 2009. I was 21 years old, wide-eyed, in between schooling and spending the New Year holiday in glorious New Hampshire at my Aunt’s house. My journal entry recounts such a beautiful memory, and a dream turned real. This year I got to spend my winter building snowmen, making snow angles and sledding with my younger cousins. And the best of all, seeing snow fall in light, fluffy flakes from the heavens, for the first time ever! The greatest type of rain in my opinion. Having lived and grown up in Southern California, snow was a thing made for the movies. I had seen snow before. A few winters when I was younger, my family went up to Big Bear—a mountain town in California. We learned to kiddy ski, go sledding and have the most epic of all snowball fights. But there was always one thing missing, at least for me. SnowFLAKES. While I had had the opportunity to be in and see snow, I had never actually seen snow fall from the sky. It either snowed the day before, the day after we left, or at night while I was sleeping, and I ALWAYS missed it.

So at 21 years old, New Years Day 2010, I woke up and could almost feel something stirring inside me. Maybe I was just excited for another day of pure, snow bliss, or maybe…I yawned for a moment and peered out the side window in my room. “Oh my god, it’s snowing!” I screamed. And as a 5 year old waking up on Christmas morning excited for gifts, I immediately ran to the back door to go outside—nothing but a tank top and my pj pants to keep me warm; and no shoes. As I slid the back door open, I could feel the cold air swiftly swoop into and replace the warm air in my lungs. The snow took my breath away—literally. I just stood there. Shoeless. Arms wide open, eyes closed, mouth gaping while facing the sky, catching snowflakes on my tongue like I had seen all the kids in the movies do. The sheer joy and rapture of the moment left a tiny icicle on one of my eyelashes from the tears of overwhelming happiness gathering beneath my closed eyelids. I felt like a little girl again experiencing one of nature’s most precious events for the very first time. Something pure and something new! This was, and is still, one of my most cherished and treasured memories. (I love how reading can re-spark such awesomely detailed and vivid memories).

I am so happy that this grand adventure took as long as it did to happen. I know that even as a child I would have been thrilled to see snow fall, but it could never have meant as much to me as it did in that moment. I am one of those rare, weird people who feel nothing but absolute desire, love and passion for the snow. Who still gets giddy and starts jumping up and down every time I see it—probably due in part to the fact that I never had to “shovel” it off a driveway, or scrape its remnants off my windshield when I’m already late for work and now I’m going to be even later because I can’t see. At any rate, my true appreciation for the white, whimsical wonder that is snow will never die!

Thank you Mother Nature for your glorious displays!