Snowdance

As the temperature rises to the point of causing slow insanity in the town where I live, people often ask me if I wish I’d stayed in a cooler climate. Sometimes I have to think about it, but my answer is always ‘no.’

Here’s why.

It was her dance with this northern land that had kept him here.

He would have sought warmer climates if just for himself, but could not imagine life without her delight over the glittering flakes and various snow-beings: men, angels, and bunnies. She would advance each day into the spiritual winter, then return to him with stories that overflowed him, for that evening, with perfect understanding.

He could not imagine her dance without the winter as her partner.

So it was, for seasons that he had not thought to count, as she would flutter into the snow, performing dances to suit its many moods. She would sashay her tongue under each flake one day; the next, she would waltz with a freshly blanketed meadow. On the quietest days, when the temperature dropped even lower, she would pass reverently, on ballet tiptoes, the shiny new drifts that were cloaking some tree or fence. Watching her was like translating nature. Whatever nature hid, she revealed to him with the steps that it put in her feet.

So it was, until the winter requited her love, and wrapped her completely in a frozen hug.

The meadows were now merely white. The population of snow-beings had moved on. Every flake fell, uninterrupted, upon the small mound where he had lain her. Her mother was sequestered in their home, blaming him and blaming the winter, but he took great solace in blaming neither. The tumbling flakes still performed her dance as they fluttered to the ground, and they promised to keep dancing it countless seasons beyond him.

They would endure, as a daughter’s happiness should.

– Some somber Words from K. Alan