Solitude

I love snow. I am without a doubt, a winter person. I do not like hot, humid, muggy days. I do not like running around in shorts and tank tops. Although, I really like the freedom sandals bring. I prefer the crisp coldness of winter, when everything is tucked in under a blanket of snow. My ex-husband used to say I grew up in the 'frozen tundra'. Not quite. The Tundra is near the Arctic Circle. Upstate NY is a long ways from the Arctic Circle. Although, by mid-January, it is easy to confuse the two.

As kids, we would play outside in the snow for hours. Our fingers would be numb with cold, our cheeks rosy. We only came in when Mom dragged us inside. Then we warmed up with a mug of cocoa and begged to go back out.

My favorite time is right after it has stopped snowing. The world is so quiet. The snow seems to have muffled any sounds. I was a teenager when I first became aware of the peacefulness after a snowstorm. We used to create a house in the yard. We didn't do it with snow bricks. Rather, our house was one dimensional. We would walk off 'rooms' through the snow. Mom and Dad's yard has a natural terrace, their house is on a nice flat spot and then there is a slight incline into the backyard. This allowed for a split level play house. The hill became the 'stairs'. We did the same thing in the fall, raking the leaves so they became the walls of our house and the walls of the rooms. Dad would get a little annoyed when he came home to find leaves spread all over the yard. From the upstairs, you could see the blueprint of our leaf or snow house.

The snowbanks on the edge of the driveway became recliners. You didn't have to create a chair, you just flopped down into the snow bank. While my sister and I were playing one day, I flopped into my snow recliner, and all I heard was silence. I knew the snowplows were going by on the road, the sharp metal blade scraping along the pavement. I knew our neighbors were shoveling their driveways. Our friends shrieked as they played in their yards. There was always a dog or two barking in the distance. Yet somehow, all of that disappeared. All I heard was silence. It is a silence that almost makes your ears hurt. We've become so accustomed to being surrounded by noises, that the silence is strange, unfamiliar. Not spooky. Just calming.

My mother looked out the kitchen window and saw me lying in the snowbank. She came out and asked what I was doing. I told her I was listening. She listened and said she didn't hear anything. Exactly! I think she thought I was being a difficult teenager, because she shook her head and walked back into the house, telling me not to get cold.

I was reminded of this last night, when I let the dogs out in the evening. It had snowed all day, and everything had a pretty covering of soft white powder. We live in the suburbs, so there are always sounds. Birds singing, dogs barking, cars going by on the street. Frequently there are sirens. I stepped onto the patio, and was met with silence. Welcome silence. You could almost hear the snow falling. And even that was falling softly, so as not to disturb the magic. The usual light pollution was muted by the snow blanket, and everything had this very rosy glow. It was calming. I wanted to start a fire in the chimenea and sit there, enjoying the silence. I felt grounded. Things seemed to be a bit out of control this week, but the snowy silence helped me regroup. The world only belonged to me at that moment. I could block out everything else. It doesn't matter where I am or how old I am, as long as I live someplace we get snow, I will always be able to steal these little moments.