Snow Up Close

I grew up in a desert valley 50 miles inland from San Francisco. I grew up in a place where it is so hot your feet sink into the asphalt at midday and children wait till after dark to play their games of hide and seek.

The thing about California is that you can drive to almost any kind of weather within a couple of hours. Snow-capped mountains, palm trees, redwood forests, desert.  So, I did see snow but only from a distance.  It was often frosting the tops of the mountains that ringed Livermore Valley.

But I didn’t know snow up close.

I knew it from children’s stories. I knew that Lucy stepped into a wardrobe full of fur coats.  She closed her eyes, arms stretched before her, brushing past the softest of furs, until the air came alive with a piney smell and the light glowed and the sounds hushed and she opened her eyes in Narnia, a land of vast whiteness.

I knew it from Charlie Brown and his friends. Lucy, and Linus and even Snoopy wore mitts and scarves and they spun and glided on their frozen- over pond. They turned their faces up to the falling snow and it gathered on eyelashes and melted on their tongues.

The first time I saw snow up close was Grade 5. Our school classrooms were designed for maximum coolness, shade and ventilation.  The hallways were outside corridors with large shady overhangs.  Each classroom had three walls of windows.  Each classroom had two doors.  And everything was on the ground level.

One day in class, our teacher, Mrs. Taylor, unrolls the map mounted like a pull-down blind on the only wall that doesn’t have windows. I can never see the board due to all the reflected glare.  I see blobs of pink and pale green countries.  I see Jeffrey wiggling in the seat next to me.

His arm shoots up. The teacher calls on him.

Mrs. Taylor, it’s snowing outside.

Snowing? I have never ever seen snow fall.

Something like electricity runs through the room and now we are all shifting and turning in our seats.

Not now, Jeffrey, the teacher says in an automatic drone.

But Mrs. Taylor . . .

All over the classroom, more arms shoot up, pumping in the air for emphasis.

But, but . . .

Irene, sitting closest to the door, blurts out I can’t take it anymore.  She is up and out and we stampede after her.

Outside, I look up.

Blogs of white are clumping on the way down, more sleet than snow. We try to catch it on our tongues but that’s harder to do than it looks.

It gathers, then puddles, on the grey concrete and is gone, turned to icy cold water while our sneakers get drenched.

This is what snow looks like? The way I imagined snow and what it actually looked like are so different.  Is it possible to still love something once you see it up close?

We moved to Canada during the Viet Nam war. Canada.  I loved the idea of it.  No, I didn’t think all Canadians lived in igloos and that all the police officers rode horseback in red uniforms.  I thought Canadians were super-hero peacemakers who spoke both English and French and knew how to wear hats and mitts and scarves.

I learned that once you leave your homeland, any homeland, a kind of longing starts to pump in your veins. The immigrant song, I call it.  And you start to feel that you don’t belong anywhere.

And I learned a lot about snow.

Walking down the laneway – laneway! We didn’t have laneways in California – with my new Ottawa friends, the smell and crunch and colour of autumn leaves and one of the girls says oh look, it’s snowing.  Snowing?  I see maple keys helicoptering down and have to really focus to see the tiny flakes of white she is talking about.

I learn a lot about snow that year. I learn how to walk on black ice, but only after falling in the playground and getting a concussion.

I learn that snow can look fluffy and white but feel icy-wet and cold.

I learn that on really cold days, it just pops out into the air, not falling exactly, just the last bits of moisture precipitating out of the forty-below cold.

I learn about the long golden light of winter afternoons and velvet shadows on pristine white.

My first boyfriend, Pete, bought me a coat from Salvation Army with his paper route money. One with water-resistant fabric, not like the wool coats our parents had bought my siblings and me.  Mom and Dad didn’t know anything more about winter than we kids did.

Pete taught my youngest sister, Barb, how to wrap a scarf for maximum warmth.

Pete taught me that, yes, yes of course it’s possible to love something or someone once you’ve seen them up close.

When do you realize that you’re home? Does it happen on momentous occasions like the first time you hold your baby daughter in your arms?  Born safely at home and gathered into the love of family and friends.

Or does it catch you in odd moments – after driving 12 hours back from Montreal, after a week of slogging through the salty slush of urban streets and stepping out into a moonlit snowlit Sault Ste. Marie evening and whispering to yourself Yes.  Yes, this is home.

The Canada I moved to stood up to the US government, and it took in Vietnamese refugees and it welcomed American draft resisters. But Canada up close has a dark side, too, and one that can’t be covered up with a freshly fallen blanket of snow.

Well, maybe that’s changing and I refuse to be pessimistic. I don’t want to shrug and mumble, let’s wait and see.  I want to say, Yes.

I want to say, Yes, we care about First Nations communities that still don’t have safe drinking water.   We care about the status of women.  We care about the planet and we don’t want to be world’s climate villains.  We care about residential school survivors and the families of women, murdered and missing.  We will never forget.

And if I could, I would go down to Pearson Airport and I would greet you with a corny sign and a warm coat and I would teach you how to wrap a scarf and if you asked me if it’s possible to love your new country even once you’ve seen it up close, I would say Yes. Yes, of course.  Yes, a thousand times yes.

And I would also say this:

Welcome home.

*****

Peggy Lauzon lives and writes in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. (feature image, Pete and Peggy)