In winter, Maggie says she’s never seen snow before. I put on the kettle and heat up tea bags with my mittens round her favorite coffee cup telling me to “Buck Up” in block text round the side. I tell her that snow is bittersweet. She shrugs, spoons sugar into her tea. “Buck Up”
On Tuesday, Maggie stares shyly out the window. She is thinking about snow. Postcards and shop windows painted with snow scenes come to mind but she can only see these things. She cannot smell that particular kind of frozen air that stings your nose numb until your best friend calls you Rudolph on the playground and you punch him, right in his Rudolph nose.
She cannot hear snow. The way it eats at your eardrums so quietly it must be at a decibel that only dogs can hear, because dogs? They always know when snow is coming. The way snow deadens the city in the morning and creaks eerily underfoot in the woods on an evening walk. Calls to friends across snow flocked fields go mostly unheard over smothered ground and under scarves and knit hats.
“How cold is snow?” Maggie asks me. I tell her to find a snow cone machine and build a snow ball in her palms. She scoffs. “I know snow is frozen water, you know, but it just looks too soft to be that cold.”
In the seventh grade I was jumped on my walk home from school; white-washed by a group of holier-than-thou eighth graders. Chunks of ice mixed with gravel and snow, creating that stinging cold that makes your nose bleed like a karmic Rudolph and your eyes water with glacial tears as you slide home with frozen pride.
Maggie has never tasted snow. The different textures it can possess; at times light as air, it melts instantly on your tongue. At others snow is dense and wet, perfect for snowball and snow angel making. Every winter my grandfather makes vanilla ice cream from the second snowfall of the year. He says the first fall is dirty.
On Friday, it snows. Maggie wakes me up at five AM screaming, “It’s snowing! What do we do?” Doughy eyed from sleep I can see the soft, white glow through the blinds that can only mean one thing: snow. “Stage a national emergency, call your brother. We’ll need supplies if we’re going to survive…” I mumble matter of factly. Maggie falters, “Wait, really?” she inquires quietly, sadly, naively. “No!” I shout, pulling on my boots and mittens, “Put these on.” I hand her a hat and a pair of rubber boots, a size too small, and point to a coat in the closet.
“But we’re only going out for a few minutes, right? Do I need these?”
“Guess it’s up to you,” I shrug.
Maggie doesn’t take a moment to consider as she slips on the hat, drops the boots and sprints out into five AM snowfall. Taking my time, I tug on the same winter attire I have been tugging on my whole life. I walk out slowly, burdened by my winter gear and watch Maggie. Stocking footed, with a knit hat on sideways, grinning and chattering by the oak tree. Snow piled atop her head, gathering on her arms and lowering her temperature. Maggie, not phased for a moment, falling backward into a drift, calling,
“I knew it, it’s so soft!”
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