The first snow of the year, however, is magical (just ask Lorelai Gilmore). I woke up this morning to flakes the size of quarters floating down outside my window. I've found that coming home is hopelessly interlaced with deja vu--the way the air feels in my bedroom, the boys yelling at the football game in front of a fire in the fireplace, piling onto my parents' bed to harass mom and argue with James (quoting Toy Story and talking over each other).
The world feels smaller when it snows. I used to think that was because the area turned into a real neighborhood with the snow. Families tromp down coated streets to sled the good hills, then tumble into each others' houses for hot chocolate. Today, however, the closeness, the shrinking world, was a product of nature herself, not society. The clouds are like a layer of cotton balls hovering over the earth, dropping snow to build up layers on the ground.
Heavy Snowstorm Sky
My story of beauty and color, all snow aside, came bright and early yesterday. I was sitting on a plane at Ontario Airport at 6:00am, waiting to taxi out. I had just read the part of J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey where Zooey is talking with Franny in the living room, and looks out the window to see a little girl playing hide-and-go-seek with her dog (one of the most precious descriptions in literature!). He concludes that there are "really nice things in the world," but that we get too sidetracked to appreciate them. He then quotes something Buddy once said about beauty:
He said that a man should be able to lie at the bottom of a hill with his throat cut, slowly bleeding to death, and if a pretty girl or an old woman should pass by with a beautiful jug balanced perfectly on top of her head, he should be able to raise himself up on one arm and see the jug safely over the top of the hill.
Then, Zooey describes the religious philosophies of several of his older siblings, including Walt's, which is that it's God's punishment for "people who have the gall to accuse Him of having created an ugly world."
After reading this, and the page or so that followed, I looked out the plane window. Tired and feeling a little sick from getting up at 4am to get to the airport isn't quite the same as lying with my throat cut, bleeding to death, but outside the window was my pretty girl with a beautiful jug balanced perfectly. The ashen pavement shone with water, and rain was coating the gray stairs and loading tunnels, while a blue-white sky, furry and overcast, hovered overhead. The lights splattered on the ground in shiny stripes. The rising sun bathed the scene in a glowing blue cast. This dawn periwinkle contrasted with the few orange cones dawdling in the foreground in a manner evocative of Monet's painting of dawn in the harbor.
"Impression Sunrise," Claude Monet, 1873
A few minutes later, I looked out again, and the scene had descended to a grayness far less arresting. But for a little while, even a patch of gray and white, metal and white, metal and plastic, orange and cement, completely manmade corner transcended to an esoteric realm of ethereal blue light and rain-blurred neon orange triangles. And I saw it do so. I with my hard, ugly little soul was blessed with beauty for a moment before a 6:30am flight.
