It’s snowing here! I don’t tend to check the weather forecast so I was pleasantly blindsided by it.
Something feels so fresh and awe-inspiring about the first snow of the season, especially when the precipitation sticks as it is doing here today. It started out as a light but bone-chilling rain around 7 o’clock, when it was still dark outside, and then crescendoed into fat, feathery snowflakes as the sky tiptoed towards daylight. Now there’s a blanket of fragile new-ness outside my window which makes me want to put on earmuff headphones, curl inside myself and explore everything which appears in the cave behind my eyelids! Even though winter brings plenty of unpleasantries like cold and wetness and depression, somehow the first snow of the year redeems it all.
Have you ever had an experience where, in the very moment it’s unfolding, you can already foresee how it will stay with you for the rest of your life? I am not sure if this is a universal thing, but ever since I was little I’ve always felt like I could “hard-wire” memories into my brain just by focusing my attention on specific details. The question was only what types of experiences I felt compelled to do this for - sometimes I would just pick settings at random, like a mind’s eye screenshot of my first grade classroom on an ordinary school day, for instance, or any mundane moment out of hundreds of orchestra rehearsals I took part in over the years. Why did I sometimes choose to hard-wire a memory and at other times completely forget that remembering was an option?
Today, my motivation for hard-wiring is mood-driven: I am choosing to remember this wistfulness of sitting-on-my-couch-by-the-slanted-window as it collects thick, six-sided snowflakes which first crystallize, then eventually slide down towards the street, defeated, as slush. And somehow this process of hard-wiring is reminding me of the last vivid memory I’d ingrained into my brain: waving goodbye to my mother earlier this year, half a world away and on the other side of a passing winter, after visiting her for the first time since COVID hit.
As I clambered up the steps of the train, struggling to balance my weight against the bulkiness of my suitcase, I turned back to look at my mom.
She stood on the platform waving at me with fast, broad arm strokes, her puffy purple jacket shimmering in the pale sun. I could only see her crinkly eyes because she wore a surgical mask which swallowed the lower part of her face. For one atomic moment she was an eager child waving to me, the adult. A lump rose in my throat as I realized I didn’t know when I would see her again, and I turned quickly to look for my seat before she could see the tears pooling in my eyes. I was grateful to the conductor for closing the doors at that moment, before I could turn to look out again.
"ever since I was little I’ve always felt like I could “hard-wire” memories into my brain just by focusing my attention on specific details"
Honestly, this sounds like a superpower. One I'd love to have.
That moment on the train steps? Beautifully described❤️