Etch-A-Sketch
Each winter I hope for snow. It doesn’t have to snow every day. There doesn’t have to be piles of snow and snowdrifts blocking the driveway. Just a good snow that makes me smile.
Snow has always seemed magical to me. I don’t like driving in it, but I can. I love to sit bundled on the couch in front of the fireplace watching movies while it is snowing outside. When I lived at West Point, New York that happened often. When I lived in upstate New York, it happened all the time. I never got tired of it. I didn’t mind the snow shoveling or bundling up in layers. I never minded being stuck inside. I got tired of seeing the mounds of dirty snow, but they were always quickly covered by a new blanket of that magical white stuff. Snow does not happen often in Tennessee so that makes it even more special.
I woke up this morning, looked out the window and saw snow. It was unexpected and it made me smile with delight. I watched the flakes come down and thought about why I love snow so much. What is it about snow that makes it so extraordinary to me?
Is it childhood memories of going sledding with my parents and siblings?
Maybe it is the memories of doing “snow dances” with my children in New York to make it snow.
It may be the memories of making snow ice cream with my grandmother and then making it for my children.
Snow makes my world seem more beautiful. It’s like a mental cleansing of the earth for me. I’ve always thought of it this way. It’s white, crisp and clean and looks so pure. I imagine it scrubbing the earth and the air, kind of like the Etch-a-Sketch visual I use when I teach meditation to people that have never meditated before. I tell them, our mind is like an Etch-a-Sketch. All the clutter and junk that goes through our minds each day are the scribbles on that Etch-a-Sketch. When they meditate it is like taking that Etch-a-Sketch and shaking it really hard and clearing it to a brand-new slate. That’s what meditation does to our minds.
For me, when I look out the window and see the snow on the ground it does the same thing for my world. I picture the snow cleaning and clearing the negativity and clutter of this world.
The snow causes us to slow down and see the world around us.
To remember the child within us that loved to sled in the fresh snow.
The child that dreamed and hoped and laughed.
The child that saw beauty in the smallest of things.
I know there are plenty of people that don't like the cold, but I have seldom met anyone that doesn’t see the beauty in the newly fallen snow. I will always see the beauty and magic in snow.
And yes, I still have been seen doing a snow dance when there is the possibility of snow.
