Paradoxical Undressing

The Snow Story · 6 August 04

I’d been living in Georgia and it had been two years since I’d seen snow. Growing up in Pennsylvania, snow was an integral part of my childhood and I loved it- how soft it was, and how white, and how it dampened all the sound so that sometimes you could wake up, and without even looking out the window, you would know it was a snow day. Flushed red cheeks, ugly knit caps and sleds that still had those runners you had to wax, and we’d go sledding down the hill in the graveyard, screeching with joy and terror and trying to avoid all the gravestones.

Georgia was different- it was very beautiful, but it was flat- no hills. No snow, either. Hot, hot humid heat all the time, everything wet and lush and green. It was gorgeous but I missed the snow and eventually I returned to the North and moved to New York.

It was a rough time there for me- I’d never really known I was a country girl until then, but pretty soon it was painfully obvious. There were good times, too- I was seeing a great guy, threre were stores and clubs and shops I’d never dreamed of, and the burritos were great. But I guess somewhere I knew that I still hadn’t found what I needed.

By Autumn I had a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What a great place to work! I thought, but soon I was going nuts there, too, falling apart a little at the seams.

One evening after work, I walked out onto the steps and it was snowing. Big, wet, flakes, light as air. There was snow everywhere, already three inches deep on the pavement, lit up against the dark sky by the Museum’s spotlights like motes of dust in a sunbeam. The knot inside me loosened a little and I looked up and smiled. Snow! That’s what I’d been missing. Snow.

I noticed that there was this tiny Latina woman who had been staring at me during this little reverie and I turned and smiled back.

‘You look so beautiful with the snow caught in your dark hair,’ she said. Wow, I thought. It’s snowing and someone in New York is being nice to me.

‘Thanks,’ I smiled. ‘You know, this is the first time I’ve seen snow in two years. I missed it so much.’
She laughed. ‘I’m from Argentina. This is the first time I’ve seen snow in my entire life.'