Blessing

"Tough times never last but tough people do"

That day, walking out of the Fine Arts Museum in UMASS Amherst, I discovered a powerful secret.  When I stepped out the door the crisp, crackling cold air rushed around to embrace me.  The air�"not the sky, the air�"was gray.  But not the gray of an approaching storm, the gray of fog rising off a still pond that promises magic.  And cold, of course cold, the kind of cold that makes you truly alive in a way that being trapped indoors never brings. 

Around me, conversation faded.  Not the abrupt awe that you read about; not the sort of awkward “we have nothing to say” fading conversation.  The sort of fading conversation that said “wow this is beautiful” with a truth words could not express. 

I would like to say that we drew together, mom, dad, sister (Emily) and me.  I could write that, but that would ruin the truth of it.  First, Emily was home, getting ready for softball.  But more importantly, that’s not what happened.  We each drifted off, sliding as if into cotton filled dreams. 

But all of our eyes were caught and drawn upwards, like moths to a fluorescent light bulb, to a sky painted with hasty and uneven strokes.  Drawn up the way that the flower is drawn to the surface, looking up, pulled by some natural force that it couldn’t explain or ever understand.  And, just as our eyes absorbed the twisted congregation of clouds, the first flakes began to fall, like angel feathers, each one a healing blessing.  Its healing covenant sealed when that first silent flake kisses the grass at my feet.  And I, like the rest of the world�"spent a single moment watching its blessing melt into the grass. 

Then my gaze rose once more, this time to a sky filled with a flurry, as if every angel in heaven was shedding.  And I closed my eyes as the angels’ blessing fell on my face, chilling my nose and tickling my eyelashes. 

Before my closed eyes I see the flakes tumbling in your long black hair, making you look as spotted as a butterfly.  As you turn toward me, fresh and beautiful as you were then, you shed precious flakes with a laugh.  “It’s beautiful” I hear you say; happy in a way I haven’t seen in a long time.  And I nod, because I know, adding more, more useless words, will only disturb the beauty of the moment. 

But the scene here was still there, pulling ever more strongly, back to the angles that have painted my world so white it feels fresh and ready to live in again.  Trees and bushes, flowers and grass and houses are all clad in a radiant white dresses.  Flakes float and flitter, like little birds, one to another.  Happy as care free children as they chase each other to the ground. 

Somehow, moving by habit, we made our way to the car.  And as we drove the winter grayness draws the past away, hiding it all under blankets of peaceful snow, as Led Zeppelin played the healing incantation.  Watching the whitened landscapes fly by “Houses of the Holy” took me back two years, before any of this began.  And I, like the world outside, was made anew, purest white and ready to live again. 

“Thank you angels” I whispered, barely a breath, like the soft rustle of grass breathing “for healing me.”