Snow

Just before Christmas, my mother

gathered me up on her lap and,

barely rocking in the cane-bottomed

chair next to our tree, told me in

a quiet voice that Santa Claus was

not real.

Her hold on me was smothering, and

I realize now that this was a rite of passage,

not for me, but for her.  I was her youngest

and she wanted to hold me one last time

before releasing me into . . . well, the

world without Santa Claus, I guess.

I got outside as soon as I could.

The winter sky was turning dark.

People were already talking about

an open winter.  It was cold, almost

too cold to snow yet it was spitting

flakes.  I looked closely at one that

had landed on the back of my black,

vinyl mitten.  Then I opened my mouth,

threw my head back and tried to

eat the falling snow.

FG  12/4/2014

To live in a garden by a flowing stream is a metaphor for heaven that runs through the Koran.  No one, it seems to me, who has lived through a New Hampshire winter would have ever come up with that.  I’ve lived in lands without Santa or snow for over twenty years now, and what I miss most is the snow, the snow that smothers the barren land.