Snow Piece

Snow Piece, finally...and Midsummer Night's Dream was a hit!  I missed the last meeting but it looks like everyone is writing pieces on happy?

That was her name for me.

It’s what she called me during that time of emergence lived some thirty odd years ago.  Admittedly, I was much, much younger then, more child than woman…but I can still remember feeling oddly flattered by the comforting comparison.  She would, on occasion, laughingly, (and I perceived), lovingly, taunt me by attempting to make me one with that enduring storybook character.   You know her… we all know her…that iconic, pure, raven haired beauty, arms outstretched, surrounded by all of nature …dainty fingers held aloft for songbirds cheerfully flitting about her…

A cultural archetype made accessible to a twenty first century audience drawn from one man’s imagination…made so unforgettable that I still recall the colors of her gown…the soprano voice…the fairness of her skin.  Her entire persona stood for and embodied genuine goodness, fairness and beauty.    And then there was the story...the whole service thing... the taking care of…the making sense of chaos…the finding home and family.  More importantly, there were the men to care for…aah, and music and song, and silliness and laughter, and a forest in which to frolic, and there was temptation even, and the triumph over evil, and well…lest we forget…a “and they all lived happily ever after” fairy tale ending.   The naming allowed me, even encouraged me, for quite a long time, to maintain a hold on the inane belief that I too, had been, and might forever remain, as someone at least partially pure, hopeful, untouchable, an innocent, a believer in goodness and happy endings.

I can still taste those early days…and smell them…and hear them.  I remember yards of white cotton lace against tall mullioned windows…  glowing oak floorboards… lavender fragrance emanating from polished furniture, artful objects, (still meaningful to me at the time), buffed and carefully placed… smooth, cold, grayish veined marble atop a carved walnut hutch…vanilla icing lapping at the sides of velvety chocolate cakes laid upon antique crystal pedestals…a beloved child’s footfall running through the Doctor’s old house.  A belief…a ridiculous holding out in the name of goodness in support of one pure perseverance that there could be no real enemies…not yet…not back then…only those imagined.   All was goodness.  Purity prevailed. 

Ice melted into blue rivers and the waters edged their way cutting deep patterns across the undulating fields.  I recall once standing on that blessed piece of land, face and hands and toes frozen, watching a dancing veil obscure nature’s familiar silhouette.  And then, one day, while none of us were looking, the brooding wind seeped in through the gap of the heavy front door, bringing sickness, and with it hopelessness, and the residue of exhaustion, like a covering of smothering ash, began to blanket our world.

The dimming of the early years dragged on…effervescence and hopefulness replaced by teeth clenching, mind numbing, relentless emptiness, boredom, and an overwhelming sense of loss.  I did what I was supposed to do didn’t I?  I scrubbed the floors.  I prepared the tea.  I kept the schedules.  I loved.  I cared for.  I believed.  I even found a way to wrap my broken entirety around the first gentle unraveling…yet even so, finally they found me…and those wicked weavings began to poke holes in me… and the last remnants of the pretend world I had once taken refuge in, began to melt away.

Now, years later, one can simply Google the word to watch hundreds of icy blue and white images pop up on a screen.   I wonder now, looking back, if she, that woman I had loved, who stood larger than life, my once great giant of a friend, had been meaning to refer to that lovely, soft, innocent, tranquil, healing kind of white…or rather, that painfully bright lose your sight kind of white.   Perhaps in her wisdom she saw both.

Karen