First Snows

I was walking through a snow-ridden Helsinki. It had started snowing while I was on my way, on train, the first snow of the season, and I didn’t have a hat.

I was on my way to meet this guy. I was in love with him. He was my first real love. I was young. I thought because he had given me a mix tape including There Is a Light That Never Goes Out meant we were meant to be together forever and that his love was undying and solid.

I was cold, and the way was long, so I popped into a clothing store. It was this hip, indie store, an expensive place the guy had shown me. It was dark already, it was late afternoon or early evening. There was a bargain bin, and an old-fashioned brown tweed cap in the bin. It was a little bit large for my head, it was a man’s size, but I liked it, it made me look like one of those newspaper boys from the Thirties. So I bought it.

I had no idea. Love by nature is transient and fickle, and everyone who tells you they will love you always are either lying, or just throwing themselves at the mercy of the Fates and hoping for the best.

I put the hat on and left the store, back in the sleet and wind. It was always windy in Helsinki. My feet hurt in the very high platform boots that were the style then. But I looked pretty, I looked hip. Not at all like a little country girl.

I was living in the East, with the Yawning Man. It was way up in the north, so the permanent snow came down early. I had a very early class, an eight o’clock, and because we were living all the way out by the river, a long way from the university, I had to get up at six and leave, on foot, because it has always been my favorite means of transportation, no later than seven. It took about forty-five minutes to walk at a brisk pace to the school, and I needed to add an extra ten minutes to cool off after the hike before I was ready to get to class.

He was making coffee and preparing breakfast in the small kitchenette. We had the radio on, Radio Mafia’s morning show where those two goofy guys would giggle and joke around. It used to make us laugh.

I had been around the block a few times by then, and no longer took declarations at face value. The Yawner was wearing the tweed cap that winter, and it fit his head much better than it had ever fit mine. Ours was a domestic, safe, serene coupling, back then I used to think that sharing a pizza and laughing at the same things meant an undying and solid love.

It was pitch black and still snowing when I left. It had been snowing the whole night, so I was practically paddling through. The snow plows were busy clearing the center, they would get to our part maybe at nine or nine-thirty. Then the snowing halted, and the sky cleared. The stars were still out, it felt like walking in a gorgeous fairytale land in the middle of the night. It was very cold, it was always cold in the winter there, but I had dressed warmly and was wearing a practical pair of winter boots.

My way took me by a large, old cemetery right before I got to the edge of town. I kept looking at the firs with the branches hunched under the piles of snow, and the bare trunks of birches, and the low stone fence made of gray round boulders, and the tombstones, and thought how incredibly beautiful it was, and how lucky I was to be out just then to witness all of it.

I remember last seeing the brown tweed cap as a prop in one of Alek’s theater projects, when he was playing a farmer or one of the seven brothers or something or other, and appeared on stage wearing it and tossing it in the air. I had had no idea, we were no longer together by then and I don’t think he even knew or remembered the cap had belonged to me once. Somehow seeing him there, in my old cap, in front of a full audience, made me cry that day.

This morning I awoke when I heard my man in the bathroom taking a shower. I have been down with the flu for several days, bedridden, feeling blue not just because of being sick, but because I have been fighting with my family, which I never do, and, since the fight, been busy pushing away and alienating everyone and anyone in sight, including him, because of my solitary, perhaps selfish, sadness. I have been closed-off and sullen, uncommunicative and angry.

I like wearing felt hats now, and sometimes berets, something I would have found profoundly cheesy and pretentious in my twenties, and wool knit caps. I am way past taking anything anyone says to me as proof of anything. I like looking at people’s actions now, instead of trusting the words, once uttered perhaps in all sincerity, but quickly grown stale and hazy when enough time passes. It is funny that I should love words so much, yet have so little faith in them. My man, also a lover of words, and myself have an extremely flammable, downright explosive, relationship because we are both incapable of purifying words from plausible harmful interpretations, to see the wood for the trees, if you will. We are like a couple of spiteful Semantics scholars, bickering over the exact meaning and all the possible allusions of a given word until the cows come home. Sometimes even later.

I hadn’t been following any news, so I had no idea it would snow. Unlike Lorelai, I have no sixth sense when it comes to snow, although I wish I did.

I listened to my man shower, then brush his teeth. I checked the alarm clock, because I still have one by the bed, I like old-fashioned things like alarm clocks and felt hats, and saw I had slept for twelve hours straight. I opened the Venetian blinds a little, and was overwhelmed at the sight of the near-by speck of woods, all covered in snow. It was dark still, but there is a street light right outside our bedroom window that doesn’t go out until ten, and the warm, reddish light of the lamp post illuminated the spectacular white view, the kingdom of snow, lots and lots of it, so incredibly beautiful I only stared at it, not putting on any lights in the room, just looking.

I called his name, and he came in, warily, concerned and on guard, because I had been fighting with him, too. “It’s snowing”, I said. He smiled and came over and climbed in bed with me and held me. “Yes, it is.”

“It will snow at least three meters, yes?”

“Of course.”

“And then you get to make a wish. What will you wish for?”

“I wish that you will feel better. That you wouldn’t be so sad. That the sadness will eventually pass.”

I hid my face in the nook of his body and smelled his cinnamonny, clean smell. I didn’t want him to see my tears because I didn’t want him to think I was sad now, and for some reason didn’t want to say out loud I was happy, because I felt saying it would ruin the moment. The softness, the fragility, the feeling of being spread all over him and all over the room and our home. Being elongated to enclose him entirely in my embrace. Wanting him to sense it instead of telling him.

A famous film title says that on a clear day you can see forever. I leave the forevers for the young. For me, though, this snow and this morning was a sort of brief moment of forever. I think it’s the best one can hope for. Just because something remains unspoken doesn't mean it isn't there. Silence can mean tons.

When I say it’s snowing, maybe what I really mean is I love you. That on a snow-covered day I can see forever.