Fiction Fix Sixteen

ter caught up in the swirls of snow. They both died in the summer, but they both loved
the winter. I was born in the winter; Mom called me her snow baby, the only one who
enjoyed the cold as much as she and her mother did. On the first snow, my grandmother
would drive out to our house. She’d knock loudly, and when my mother answered, she’d
holler for me, and we’d run outside and whirl around in it. It was tradition.
I can feel the hands of God carrying their voices down out of the snow, and I realize
what Grandpa felt each time he released them. There is this taste of grace in the air, a mixture
of wood smoke and cinnamon, apples and lilacs, cigars and French-pressed coffee.
They all circled upwards into a nostalgic reminder of what it meant to have them there,
and I can hear them, singing, laughing.
They’re still dancing, whirling around. Their spirits tear up the snow, little eddies
pulling up from underneath the trees. They’re still falling all over each other, laughing. As
much as they try to pull me in to dance with them, too, I can’t. They’re part of the air, the
snow; they’re as much a part of God’s hands as the wind. I’m too solidly founded in the
world to dance with them.
Each gravestone stood, monumental in the grass. They were never
buried. They both gave their wishes with whispers, handed them
off to us like crumbling notes, as they lay looking death in the face.
Let me fly into the wind, they both said.
I run inside, leaving the front door wide open. My daughter sits at the table, crayons
in hand and looks at me with wide eyes. What’s the matter, Mommy? she asks.
I think we should go dance in the snow, I say to her. She smiles, a big toothy smile in a
tiny round face.
I only waited for you to ask, Mommy, she says to me, pulling her little red coat off the
chair.
She carefully pushes each little arm into the red arms of her coat, which smells like
vanilla and lavender. She smiles again as I take her hand and lead her out the door.
We twirl around in the falling snow, and the wind twirls around us, and they’re both
there, the laughter rising in gusts around us. My daughter giggles.
Mommy, we should do this every year, she says.
I laugh. Yes, we should.
Fiction Fix 23