Snow

I am connected to the snow. One of my first memories is my Mom teaching me how to build a snowman. During the years we lived in Alaska I LOVED playing in the snow. The guys who drove the snowplows would pile up the snow on the edge of parking lots and fields and then build sledding tracks into the piles that went away from the parking lots and streets so kids could sled for hours and not have to worry about cars (and vice versa). The first winter we lived in Oregon it snowed and my Mom woke me up by throwing a snowball at my face. In the eighth grade a boy gave me snow for Christmas. My first winter home from college it snowed and stuck for days. I felt like I was being welcomed home. The summer before Abbott's accident, he and I were sitting in his office and talking about Mt. Charleston. My Mom and I had gone hiking up there during my birthday vacation, and I was telling him about the incredibly aggressive butterflies (must be reincarnated cabbies or something) up there. I remember Abbott telling me about how he loved to take his dog up there in the winter after the first snow. Our conversation ended with Abbott promising to take me up to the mountain to play. The week of Christmas we made tentative plans to go up after he got back from visiting his parents. Of course, it never happened. The accident happened..... But two days after the accident, it snowed. In Las Vegas, it snowed, and it stuck. It felt as if Abbott were telling all of us who loved him a) he was still around and b) ha-ha, look what he could do (if Abbott were given power over the weather, making it snow in Las Vegas is totally something he would have done). To me it said "I remember my promise and since I can't take you to the snow, I'm bringing the snow to you." I remember standing outside at four in the morning, shivering violently, my face turned up to the sky and just breathing as the snow's feathers brushed my face. I stood there and I knew that in a way the snow was partly for me, and that everything would be all right. Early this morning it snowed here. Esso and I had fallen asleep on my bedroom floor and were woken up by my Mom poking her head into the room and telling us that it had snowed earlier. Later on, while he was driving me to work, I looked at him and then out the window at the snow dusted trees and I knew, with warm and absolute certaintly that everything in my life is exactly where it should be right now. It's a good feeling.