upon my table top
snow is softly falling
the air is still
in the silence of my room
I hear your voice softly calling
Gordon Lightfoot
I've always identified with the melancholic angst of Lightfoot's breathtaking Song for a Winter's Night, and play Sarah McLachlan's heartrending rendition of it regardless of the season to temper times of my own melancholia. Tonight seems the perfect fit with snow softly falling and a heart filled with both sadness and joy this Christmas week. For now, immersion in what is present in my life will be my healing...
It is the evening time of a late December day. The early dark to which we still aren't fully accustomed has descended in full and with it brought a welcome blanket of snow. The snow is already several inches deep and whatever quiet it lent to the landscape has been shattered by the shouts of excited children who've donned winter gear and headed out to play. The houses are lit with their Christmas finery. Blue, red, green and golden lights frame roofs and windows. Wreathes of fragrant greenery and berries hung on outside doors to welcome callers by are softened by a layer of fluffy white flakes. There always seems to be snow between Christmas and New Years someone comments. How magical it must be to a little Seattlelite home for Christmas for whom snow is still cause for celebration. And how wonderful to head out into the dark night to play a while in the white wildness before bedtime calls everyone in for the night!
Darkened silhouettes of pom pommed toques move swiftly past my candlelit window
Muffled voices shout out plans for snowball fights, and forts
It's perfect snow for making snowballs bellows one voice,
where's the red shovel asks another.
Snow falls aslant across the street light that marks the corner of our little street
Cars move at a lessened pace up the hill of the nearby main road
Black and barren Maple branches reach up to greet the falling flakes like arms of the beloved calling me home-
This wintry night beckons a memory of pink cheeks and cracking a pottery mug my parents got for their wedding by sitting my very hot, hot chocolate in the inches deep snow on their front step to cool when I was newly in to the double digit years of my own life. In this memory I am eleven again, and worried about telling how the molten chocolate seeped like lava onto the pure white snow from the shaped and now broken clay that once represented a hopefulness in what the future held for my mom and dad. I did not get in trouble for breaking that mug despite my fears. Besides, we then represented the hope the future held for my parents as newlyweds. They no longer needed a mug to remind them of that my mother thoughtfully explained. Most definitely they had a house full of us kids reminding them of that both day and night. Yet faithfully throughout all those chaotic years of our childhood, my mother did love to see us kids out in the snow. Mom still says how happy romped upon snow makes her feel, how she hates to see the yard without little footprints marking a playful meander over her little corner of the world. Me too. And with three children of my own I now understand well why she didn't get mad at me that wintry day I broke her mug.
I hear shouts again outside, and happy screams as footsteps thump a stampede of winter-boots across my snowy suburban yard. Perhaps I'll go set the kettle for some cocoa to warm cold un-mittened hands when they soon appear in my kitchen.
A Merry, Snowy night to you!
Jill
