It is funny how everything is quieter when snow falls. It is so peaceful. Realistically though, I suppose that it is only quiet when you are inside. In your office. The buzz of business buried under the silence. In your home: no music signing, no television set speaking, the ticking clock and the hum of appliances drowned out by the silent snow. The drivers in their cars glide easily and noiselessly through the mountains and valleys of roads yet to be plowed. Their shoulders hunched and knuckles gripping their steering wheels as if in some sort of prayer that the car will go where they want it to. Radios off and listening only for the screeching tires of a car behind them, or to the side, slipping through intersections with the same clutch on the wheel and a foot pressing pointlessly onto the brake pad.
Snow makes everything brighter. Everything clearer. The night becomes lighter. There is a magic that falls with snow only in December. When the snow is at its whitest, its freshest and its softest. It is said that no two snowflakes are every the same. No two snow falls are every the same either. It is like an art.
Walking past the Walker Art Center, the sidewalks sprinkled with bright spotlights from the ground up. It appears as though the lights are actually shooting snow up into the sky. Maybe it is an offering to share the snow’s beauty - returning to its origin.
.
Ten years ago, for my birthday, my parents drove five hours to Grand Forks, North Dakota. To spend a snippet of time with me. Not only did they drive five hours, but they drove with no heat in their car. Five hours through Minnesota to North Dakota in December with no heat. Only now do I realize how crazy that is. And appreciate how much they love me. I was a horrible, horrible daughter too. I still am haunted by my behavior to this day. I think they night they got in we had dinner and then they went to the hotel and I went to a Christmas concert with my boyfriend at the time. He insisted I had to be there to see his brother sing. Why didn’t I invite my parents? Why didn’t I stay with them instead of go with him? I am so ashamed of myself. What an idiot I was. I am pretty sure the next week him and I broke up.
For that birthday they gave me my birthstone jewelry - blue zircon or blue topaz earrings and a necklace. My ears that I had pierced when I went away to college at age 18 on rare trip to the Columbia Mall had since closed up. I had friends, Katie and Ghost, re-pierce my ears in my dorm room later that day. I imagine the scenario was not unlike my mom’s ear piercing experience when at age 15 or 16 she let her friends pierce her ears in the warm detached garage of her parents’ home on a summer day. One held a potato behind her ear and punctured her ear with the needle while the other stood close by with the ice. I think her experience was more successful - eventually my ear swelled up and looked like a deflated balloon – just a little red bubble waited to expound. I don’t often attempt to wear earrings and when I do I am usually sorry.
Eleven years ago my birthday was my first year away from home. My first year at UND. That year my dad called the manager at the Grand Forks Perkins and pleaded with him to deliver a cheesecake to my dorm room. Typically they don’t do that, but somehow my dad managed to soften the man’s heart and a cheesecake was delivered to Selke hall. I don’t care for real cake. I can’t stand frosting. I always had a unique birthday cake and my family is not always a fan. Once a stack of Mickey’s chocolate donuts. Once a pile of strawberry newtons. Another couple birthdays were cherry pies. And many, many cheesecakes. My 19th year, my friends and I feasted on the delicious cheesecake. You don’t realize how delicious outside food is until you are deprived from it for months, forced to eat dining center meals day after day after day. Of course, being college students, we didn’t have much in the way of flatware and ate it straight out of the box with plastic forks. What a fun birthday.
My freshman year is when my nickname “Coley” caught on mainstream. Prior to that, it was just my family, my dad mainly who would call me Coley. I had a lot of nicknames. Coley, Cole, nickelodeon, coca-cola, Nicki (I only let one person call me that. My great uncle Billo.) My friends were witnessing me open a care package from my family. My dad slipped a note in there and also enclosed a dog treat (from my dog, Oscar) and addressed me as Coley. When my friends saw that they thought it was so cool and from then on called me Coley.
This year my birthday dessert is actually going to be a cake. It will be what is known as a “Better than Sex Cake” which I have only consumed at bachelorette parties or bridal showers. But why waste the delectable combination of chocolate and caramel for only those once in a lifetime occasions? I will call my cake, my “better than my twenties cake”. As I embark upon my thirties I want to start it out with bang. Ok, not a bang, but I at least want to be proud and be happy to be thirty. (I think I got a little woozy there.)
Growing up, the women in my family were always 25. It was the idolized age. The perfect age. Age was such a secret and 25 was where the women stalled. My mom? 25. My grandma? Miraculously 25. My mom’s cousin, Jeannie – 25. And Pasty, Jeannie’s mom (also Billo’s wife). There was one little glitch though. I was present at my mom’s 30th birthday party. But then she reverted to 25. But now, having actually been there, there is no way would I want to go back to 25. 28 was ok, 29 was good, but 25? No, it’s not for me.
Dear god I was at my mom’s 30th birthday party! How insane is that? My sister was there too. I have vague memories here and there, but I know I was at the party. There are pictures to prove it. And I was four.
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Recently I read somewhere, “love exactly where you are”. I am working on loving exactly where I am. Too many years I have spent looking forward to the future. For a future I had preplanned. For the future I had expected would be mine. What a silly thing to think you can control life when all you can control is how you react to it.
Love exactly where you are. Standing on the edge of turning thirty, toes inching over the line and I am going to love it. Whether I like it or not.
