bite thy tongue

When I was a kid, I thought living in this state was a stroke of great fortune because of the changing seasons. Specifically, the snow. We get snow. A lot of snow. With this comes the cold, but this wasn't something I ever really noticed, probably because I was kept warm by sugar, emotions for which I had no conduit, and moon boots. I loved the snow and couldn't imagine living in a place where it was green and brown all year round. It made me feel lucky. And little hipper than warm climate dwellers.

To be young. To be young and totally insane.

My adoration for the seasons has waned, a direct inverse relationship to my age. I started to give myself tricks to keep appreciating things. "Anyone can be creative when it's warm; it takes true genius to have a great idea in the winter." Or I would force myself into a moment of awe as we drove past the river, the trees creating a decadent, diamond arch above our passage. This majesty was only present immediately following a snowfall, lasting all of about 24 hours before it became a bunny flop of dirty mess. And then it was just cold again.

I have lost my appreciation for the beauty of winter and the snow. It represents exhaustion. Responsibility. Agony. It feels like death. I'm tired of being stuck in the road, stuck in my house, wet feet. No one holding hands because it's too hard with gloves. No faces seen through scarves. Pale and repetitive. There's this scene in Fargo where Steve Buscemi is burying the money in the middle of nothing. He looks around, making a mind map of his surroundings so he can return for the loot in a scene or two. To his left: a blanket of nothing. His right: a mirror image of the left and everything around and besides is all the same. He takes the red window scraper he has used to dig a shallow hole, and plants it there. An angry scar. A desperate, hail mary hope that he'll be able to get back to this same spot that looks like everything else in its description of "eternal sameness."

That's pretty much how I feel. I do not feel creative enough to appreciate what is happening around me. I feel the same as yesterday.

I have to take a different approach. I have to do something that I generally try to avoid, because I feel like this strategy is placing an undue burden on someone who can't quite speak for herself yet. Using her for something I need without her consent. But I've got to do something. So I turn to my daughter. And I use her.

She is just starting to marvel at the white blanket around her. We took her sledding once, and she drug her hand along the sidewalk, leaning into the puff. She has seen it snow, and laughed. She is just starting to get it. Next year will be better; she'll be able to play more, and will understand but a bit more about the importance of wearing a hat and gloves. She'll start to saturate her mind with the possibilities of this season.

It will be different with this than with other things I have discovered again with her as though it were the first time. Because she cannot make me like it. Because I don't. It's not like pasta or cheese or animals. But there will be this brief time in her life when the snow means something else to her. A gift from this land, from Kepler, dendritic and singular. So I will learn to keep my head level. Not curse at biting wind. I will give her space to discover what it means for her, and let her learn to tell herself whatever stories she wants about the remarkable nature of the earth. I won't destroy the possibilities for her with my own developed, prejudiced mind.

It means something, this. Letting something be special for someone. Even when you think otherwise.