Wishing for Snow

MIKE PUTMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

It's been a cold, crisp week in LA and this morning as I drove to work the foothills were dusted with snow. And when I head to Oregon for the holidays, I'll be checking the weather and like the kid in that iPhone 4S commercial, wondering if it will snow. I guess some things never change. Here's an excerpt from Through Eyes Like Mine for anyone else who's ever hoped to wake up to a blanket of white.

Wishing for Snow

A

t sunset, the world grows cold and dark. The red line of the thermometer outside the kitchen window creeps from 34 degrees to 33. I watch the line drop toward the magic numbers: 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 Celsius. It hits 32 and then keeps dropping until it rests in the mid-twenties. Now it is certain. Anything that falls from the dark night sky will be snow.

I look up into the starless sky and wish for a couple of white inches to cover the ugly, dead of winter, the naked tree branches, the brown grass, and the frozen asphalt so everything will look fresh and clean again. The clouds will break and the sun will shine through the clear, cold air. The snow will sparkle as if the whole world is sprinkled with diamonds, such a brilliant white that my eyes will hurt and I will be torn between looking out at the perfect snow and wanting to play in it, to cast snow angels and bring snowmen to life. The next night I'll wish for more snow, enough to cover the imperfections we created that day, to fill in the snow angels and bury the snowmen because even they will look more beautiful covered in a new layer of white. 

"Nori, time for bed!"

I've been staring out the window for an hour and still no snow. I head upstairs, climb into my cold bed and shiver until the sheets warm up. I try to fall asleep but since counting sheep never helps I force my mind to wander through starry skies, away from all the things I should have prayed for. I travel past galaxies and planets and into the vast nothingness of a black hole, and if I still haven't fallen asleep, I sit up and look out the window, hoping that instead of darkness, I'll see millions of white flakes falling like stars from the sky, turning my ugly world perfect and white. Most of the time the world remains dark, barren, cold and dry, or just a trace of snow dusts the trees and rooftops. I wake up morning after morning wishing for more.