Snow's Spring Symphony

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late.

-Marie Beyon Ray

I love winter. Always have. I like blankets and hot chocolate with whipped cream and comfort food and good, long books that I've been saving for a cold winter day.

I really do like winter. But come mid-March, I'm eager for spring. The anticipation of daffodils and new potatoes and fresh herbs and hanging my cup-towels on the clothes line (stretched between two budding trees in my backyard) nearly overtakes me.

Guess that's why I've been surprised - all week - at the weather. It's snowed every day in Wichita since spring began. EVERY day. The children are on Spring Break this week, but even as I write, it looks like Snow Falling on Cedars outside my window. The soft powder is blowing, bouncing... beautiful, even, as it falls. It makes me think of the Christopher Pearce Cranch poem I studied as a kid:

If there comes a little thaw,

Still the air is chill and raw,

Here and there a patch of snow,

Dirtier than the ground below,

Dribbles down a marshy flood;

Ankle-deep you stick in the mud

In the meadows while you sing,

"This is spring".

So tonight I pulled my chair up to the window, lit a few candles, and watched it snow. I found my thoughts swirling, much like the flakes on the other side of the window pane. And I wonder. I wonder if someday - when I'm as old as my ailing Grandfather - if I'll ever look back on days like this. I wonder if I'll remember these moments... remember these feelings... when I'm 70. Or 80. I wonder if what bothered me or delighted me today will even be a distant memory in 50 years.

I close my eyes and try to freeze the moment for all of time. And as I do, I realize how... how... QUIET... it is. Absolutely still. And then, I hear it. The snow. It's like snow's own quiet little symphony. Just in time for spring. And somehow, I know. I know that when I'm old I'll remember this moment....