AUR LitPut III Spring 2023 - From Now To Then

Memoir
Snow
By D. P.
Growing up in the flat marshlands of Florida, snow was an abstract concept. I understood
every scientific and meteorological explanation of it as a state of water, but I couldn’t fathom how it
might feel to hold snow in my hand or squish snow under my feet. In my imagination, influenced by
Christmas movies and elementary science textbooks, snow was cold and soft and somehow supposed
to be touched, a bit like Play-Doh. As a kid in Florida I never missed snow or craved the experience of
it; still, the idea of it awoke in me a curiosity akin to my persistent love for digging holes in the dirt or
weaving furniture from fallen pine needles.
In the winter of 2008 my dad woke my sister and me with his typical booming rooster’s call.
We were in the car in a matter of minutes. We always listened to Dad’s orders, but I remember the
maneuver from bed to car was especially prompt that morning because I had packed everything with
careful diligence the night before. My sister and I had prepared ourselves for the thirty-hour drive as if
we’d done it several times before. I settled behind the front passenger’s seat so I could admire my father
while he drove. We were traveling to Show Low, Arizona, to visit his mother, whom I’d never met
before. Most importantly, we were driving to a settlement in the White Mountains, where, I was told,
there would likely be snow.
Driving through the state of Florida needs no description. Even then I could feel that the six
hours we spent flying upwards through the Western half of the peninsula amounted to nothing but
wasted time, significant only in that it was necessary to exit the state of Florida. Flat as flat comes and
without a glimpse of the ocean, the I-75 marks the end of driving as a leisure activity and the beginning
of driving as an obligation. My dad honored the weight of obligation by pushing 100mph from
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