Winter Vignettes

Our shared love for the winters held us together. But as people, we couldn't have been any more different. You loved nature in all its rawness. Meanwhile, I embraced the rest and comfort my abode had to offer, wrapped in blankets sipping on hot cocoa. The lifeless trees, the overcast sky and the endless snow- all confined me to my home's crackling warm furnace. To you, however, the trees had gotten bare just so they could be adorned in the new white. The sky no longer burned and instead, soothed the lost souls. I never had your eyes, but that was a part of why you amused me. Like a kitten with yarn, the mystery in your being kept me interested. You called the falling snow- 'fireflies of the north'. I could never get that out of my head. I wore dark sweaters while you put on bright jackets as you rushed to play in the snow. To hold you indoors was, afterall an impossible task- almost as difficult as dragging me outside. As both our hands pressed against the window on opposite sides, we smiled looking in the other's eyes. You drew out a heart on the foggy glass and I added our initials in it. Oh, the beauty of the time our love peaked. Today you're no longer with me. I'm outdoors, making a snowman- the one silent witness to us. I secretly hope it'll make up for your aching absence- colder than the bleak December sky. I'm looking up at the fireflies of the north. But without you, they’re just styrofoam beads. Fighting glistening tears, I head back inside. This winter, I'm trying out gelato. Now I understand why you loved it so much- eating ice cream while it's snowing out. It was the only thing that could get you to come inside. Of all our debates, we could never agree on what winter tasted like- if it was hot or cold. As I dig my spoon into the cup, a thought crosses my mind. Away from me, do you also sit drinking hot cocoa alone? If only I could see you again, I'd settle our argument for once and for all. I'm surprised it took me this long to figure out. Winter's flavour is not of my hot cocoa or your loved ice cream. Instead, it tastes of your soft red lips that I now long for. Winter smells of the lavender scent of your lustrous hair, black as the clouds that brought the snow you so loved.

Baby Deer

Stumbling on wobbly legs, unfortunate to learn the world in the freeze. They rarely lived this early, this tiny, this unsteady, in the downpour of white coating the ground, covering the way home. Still, wide-eyed and stumbling, sniffing and—delighted!—taking first bounds through cold wet seeping past fur to skin, to heart. A mother’s eyes, coal-black, focused but blank (slate, stare), insides still pulsing, blood and placenta dripped in snow, drenched in snow, but the mother stands anyway. There is love there—different than ours but love all the same, and its little stumble lights something in her heart. Boy or girl? She does not know, but love? Yes, she knows that.

More bounding there—watch it go!—through layers and layers of frostbite and freezing to death in a curled shiver against a mother’s chest, but for now, it lives. It bounds.

They don’t call her a witch. She’s of something far too old for that word, they say, a power we fail to name with our new and fledgling language. Some claim she’s the winter wind, tasting a physical form for a day. Others insist she crawled out of the ocean once the shoreline started to freeze. Whatever their creed, anyone who’s lived here long enough will agree on one thing: you can find her. If you drive northbound on the longest night of the year until the alders turn to evergreens, then take a left at the crossroads where the rain becomes snow, you will find yourself on a road winding through acres and acres of pine forest. You will follow this road, perhaps for hours. Just when you start to doubt you will ever make it, the trees will part and you will see the coastline the locals only told you about in whispers. There is a cabin there, nestled among the embrace of a cove, and the door is unlocked when you’ll press down on the handle. If you’re brave, you’ll even go through.

You’re out west this winter, although you couldn’t tell anyone why you were if they asked. You’d try to explain, rattle off some excuse about seasonal work or visiting family that didn’t match your blank schedule or your lonely apartment. But you’ve heard the rumors, and you’ve still got half a tank of gas left. The radio on your car even works, although you swear it’s listening to you more these days than the other way around. It’s not like there’s much of interest to hear from you lately, though. Maybe that’s the thought that gets you behind the wheel and on the road, the thought going through your head when you park on a rocky beach and find yourself standing on the cabin’s porch. Whatever it is, you’re brave enough today.

The girl inside, sitting at the fireplace, is not who you expect to see there. She looks eleven, maybe twelve, but her eyes are older. You think you’ve seen that shade of green exactly once, when your hometown creek froze over and you swore it was deeper than before when it finally thawed again. The extra cup of tea at the table says she’s been expecting you. The smile on her face says she’s been looking forward to it.

Come inside, she coaxes you. Aren’t you cold? You are cold, actually. You think you might have been cold since you got to this side of the continent. Maybe even before that. Trying not to think of yourself as a trespasser, you close the door behind you, sinking down into the armchair opposite her and curling your fingers around the cup. The steam somehow smells like the December where you figured out there was a flaw in your design that kept you from ever feeling like a person. There still hasn’t been a December where you figured out how to fix that.

You’ve come a long way, she says.

Not that long, you respond thoughtlessly, although you’re already seeing the last few years flash by in your rearview.

She laughs as if she knows, and a frigid breeze sweeps through the cabin, bringing the heavy tang of salt with it. You remember that this is a creature of seafoam and bone, despite what she may look like, and you have to take a quick sip of tea to quash the chill that wants to rattle your shoulders. It’s not the last few hours that brought you here, she says. It never is.

This is the part where you ask your questions, you realize. This is the part where you plead for her to make you whole. But the warmth of the crackling fire can’t change how cold your spine turns at the thought of giving voice to your fears, and all you can say is I don’t know why I’m here. I was hoping you could tell me.

She tilts her head to the side, an amused smile floating on her lips. How curious you must look to her, you realize— so fragile and clueless, yet perhaps more alive than her. No one seems to know what they’re doing in winter, she muses. When the sunlight leaves and I come in. I’ve always wondered why people ask me when I’m the one who brought it.

You still don’t know what she is, and you don’t know how to ask. You settle on the easier question of Do you help them?

She chuckles. I speak with them. Many of them want me to change. They want my winds to be gentler, my days to be longer. They want to replace me with a season they deem more accommodating. She pauses, looking out to the window, where the ocean is claiming inch after inch of coastline. I’m the one who has to tell them all I do is bring out the parts of themselves they wish were different.

Your hands tense around the mug. You think of your cheek pressed to a glass pane as snow falls just beyond it, wondering if you really might be the only warm thing for miles. You remember staring bitterly at a streetlamp that had just flickered out as you passed by, wishing you had some light for yourself. You recall that creek, the one that could have swallowed you whole and frozen you over, and how you imagine you never would have been found. A wave crashes over the rocky beach, and the realization of what you’re here for follows. You want to be a person someone would go looking for.

You can’t change, you say carefully. It’s not in your nature. But it’s in mine.

She grins, and in that moment, you can tell you’ve made her proud. It’s all the encouragement you need.

Drink up, she says, raising her mug. You’ll need all the warmth you can get.

Winter magic, they call it.
You see, it is both a gift and a curse. I have enjoyed my times playing in the snow with friends, sliding down a little snow bank formed by plows shoving snow off the blacktop. Laughing. The times I throw snowballs for my dog to either catch, or never find in the midst of the snow. Snickering. The feeling of a sore and cold body as I huddle on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate. Slurping. The accomplishment of shoveling all that snow, clearing the driveway and sidewalk. Triumph. Standing on the porch, smiling threateningly at the snow plows as they go by so they avert their blades from putting a 3 ft mound of packed snow in front of a freshly cleared driveway. Dangerous. Needing to go back outside only a few hours later because there’s more than a couple inches of snow back on the concrete. Dreadful.
Listening to Christmas music, only for “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” to play too many times. Insanity. Going about a chill, regular life. Antsy. Baking more than usual however, for family and friends. The home reeking of mouth-watering sweets and bread. Comfortable.
It has its positives and negatives.
I’ll shovel snow and prank my dog. Drink hot chocolate and eat muffins. Listen to Christmas music while cleaning the house. Freeze, and then wrap myself in layers of blankets like a cocoon.
Curse and bless this winter magic.