My town got its first measurable snow yesterday and today. Depending on where you were in town, you got between a couple inches to only a dusting that is already gone as I write this. My street got the dusting.
I remember first snows of my childhood. Why were those snows so much better, so much more magical than the snow I had to go out in to run some errands in this morning? Where were the big, fluffy flakes, lazily floating down from .... who knew where? Where was the snow I couldn't wait to get out in, to catch on my tongue and feel kiss my eyelids? What was so different about the snow of my morning today? I would no more have thought of catching this snow on my tongue than I would have thought of licking it off my car (something, by the way, I've never done). Did the snow change? Or did I? And how rather sad and disheartening it is to think that it is me that has changed. Me that has lost the ability to see the magic and charm of a first snow, thinking instead of whether I should put warmer blankets on the bed and if I really needed to run these errands.
Maybe I should start by buying myself a silly, childlike hat. Something whimsical to wear when my inner child needs to be shaken awake. Maybe then I'll feel like going out to catch a flake or two on my eyelids and tongue. Maybe I will. Maybe on the second snow of the season. . . . In the back yard.
