For me, snow has always been associated with my life and on how I view it. No matter how dirty, how destroyed or ruined the terrain is, snow can blanket it in pure, brilliant white. There's a calmness that washes over me in staying up late, hearing the snow hit the window and seeing it cover the grass, cars and bushes. As I write this, it's snowing now. We might get up to 10" in my area but possibly 20" in others.
There are stories and then there are stories. Around 33 years ago my father took me to Penny Pack Park in Northeast Philadelphia. Winters were winters back then. The creek would freeze over and all the families from the surrounding neighborhood would take their kids to the park to go sledding. Although I love snow, I've never been skiing or snowboarding or worn a pair of snowshoes. I haven't even gone ice skating. But on this particular snowy winter day in January more than three decades ago I remember having a blast playing in the snow at the park and getting on a sled and sliding down at break neck speeds. I was having such fun. The time of my life with my father.
After sledding, my father took me to walk on the frozen creek and I remember him coming to me and saying: "When you see a small pile of snow on the ice, don't walk on it." So we walked and I watched as kids played hockey and my father talked with some other parents. Up ahead, I saw a small pile of snow. I wondered what it was. I was curious. I wanted to touch it and figure out why it was there. Being about 5 or 6 at the time, seeing a small pile of snow on a frozen creek seemed odd. I went over to it and put my foot on it to stomp the snow down and I had the surprise of my life. My foot didn't hit ice and fell through the hole that the snow had covered. A good portion of my left leg went into the freezing water and I must have cried out from shock as my father came running over and he was really angry. He helped me out and brought me to the car and took my boot off and I remember snow and pieces of ice coming out of my boot and how cold I was.
We left for home so I could warm up but I remember his disappointment, frustration and anger at having to leave early--because of me. There are not many good memories I have of my father. Most are tales of duality: Something nice happens in one part of the memory and then there are memories of loss, abandonment and his just plain being absent for much of my life. But the snow. I am 38 years old. I believe I spent 5 or 6 Christmas days in which my father was around. That's 32 without a father. I'd see my friends from grade school, high school and then college have a father to teach them how to ride a bike, play baseball, or even try to teach them about girls. I didn't have any of that.
At Christmas time, I'd see the hole in my family. The unspoken word (father) in which my only proof that I had one was that I was alive and that I had my memories. Pictures of my father had been blacked out (literally. I'm not making this up) so I only had what I could remember. Every year my Uncle would show us 8mm (silent) films of Christmas and holidays gone by. He'd set up a projector and we'd watch it at my grandparents. Dead silence would hang over the adults as a few seconds of my father played out on the screen. And I would wonder, remember and be torn between being happy about being away from him and happy that my mom was now safe.
Seeing snow for me in growing up, enabled me to go out into a white Winterland of newness, filled with a sense of fantasy and wonderment. I could watch the landscape change and be magical, knowing that for that small amount of time the world was young and beautiful and right. That the thought of my father not sending me a Christmas card or birthday card or trying to see my brother and I over the holidays could be ignored and forgotten. The snow, its pureness, would entice me to go play. To forget myself and just be. I could throw snowballs, build forts, play in the woods and even walk knee deep in a near freezing stream (that's a story for another day) and build new memories.
I could not change, grasp or force my father to come to us. To fix his wrongs, to apologize, make amends and set our lives right. How many times have I tried to chase after people to make them stay? Repeating past patterns, knowing that emotionally they were not available to me, but in a desperate attempt to change the past, I'd try to make things right now. How human I am and with such faults. It's laughable, but my pains and quirks make me who I am. And the snow, so white and fresh and clean brings me peace. When life wasn't calm and it was filled with subdued hurt, the snow would be a gift to me.
Decades later I am a father now. Last year I took my son sledding and I told him about the hole in the ice story but I told it from my perspective. I told him that my father never explained WHY I shouldn't step on the snow patch as it was covering a hole into the freezing water and I could get hurt. My son is growing up with me, filled with all the faults that I have, but I am present and do my best to teach him what I know, show him what I love and through my actions and words admit when I am wrong and when I need to apologize for things that I have done. Today it is snowing. My six year old and I (and possibly my daughter if she's feeling up to it as she's been sick) will go out together to shovel, to build snowmen and to go sledding. We will redefine what a father and son relationship was for me and we'll partly do that today with snow. White, cold, fresh and magical.
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