Snowflakes of Life
When I was just a girl, my mother described life to me in the most simple of ways I have heard in all my many years on this earth. She painted a wondrous picture of a winter day, the world covered in snow, all white, not one empty surface anywhere the eye could see.
In that world, each life would represent a tiny, nearly invisible snowflake. Snowflakes would come tumbling down from the heavens, freshly made and still so fragile to our surroundings. They would land, and with the proper surroundings, they would shape into something much larger than just themselves. They would shape into a clump of snow, a beautiful blanket protecting one another, something with a purpose, something made of so much more.
With unsuitable surroundings, however, they could never acclimate properly. They would melt away faster than they once came, or they would freeze away into an icicle before the sun would come out and all of that life, that shelter they have created for themselves, would just be wiped away. No matter their surroundings. No matter anything at all.
When I now sit by the window on a winter morning, looking out at the endless hills reflecting the most blinding light that can be seen all year round, I think back to my mother’s words and cannot help but smile. She, just like the many friends and family I have lost over the years, might not be here now, embracing me warmly against her chest, but she will forever be one of the greatest meanings my life could find.
To me, she will forever be that blanket of comfort, catching me as I fall, and deep down in my heart, where Ice cannot reach me in even the darkest of times, I know that when the time is right, she will go too, melting away, leaving me to fight hard to find my own purpose. To make my own story so that one day, I can pass it down to a daughter of my own, telling her of the secret of life it took me years to truly understand myself.
Then maybe, one day, she too will find herself sitting melancholy by a window, staring into absolute nothingness and seeing a whole world just outside a little window. No. Not just a world. A universe. A universe of life.