Snow
Written by Laura Detmering; Edited by Callie Rowland, Es Say, Aniria Williams, David McConico
Snow as a child meant snow pants, with their terrible suspenders, held on by plastic buckles. Thick hats and mittens, allowing only minimal finger movement, one thumb and four tiny fingers forming one giant finger and a thumb. Wool scratching at my skin. My older brother, small though he was, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I, even littler and a girl, Randy, the younger brother in A Christmas Story, unable to lower my arms, flailing around in the snow, trying to keep up. Sledding down the hill in our steep backyard with two younger brothers in tow. This was bliss.
The only girl and the most timid, I delicately stepped through the piles of snow, cautiously sitting on the sled, exhilarated to be part of the fun, but terrified of sliding too fast or hitting a tree or, worse, the metal of the swing set. Now, as then, I use my voice rarely and cautiously, but when I do, I hope it’s to speak for those who cannot themselves be heard. Dave, my older brother, would shove snow down our backs, but would protect us from bullies. His fierce love and concern was never in question, but he was still a big brother and had to teach us lessons. Matt, my middle brother, was the most carefree, sledding face first and back first, unafraid of potential injury, gleeful in his freedom. He’d thrust himself into the unknown, be it nature or social. He befriended the marginalized, not outcast himself, but also not the most popular or mainstream. Joe, my baby brother, toddling along, excited just to be with the older kids. His sensitivity showed then, as he’d cry when we were mean, but willing to stand up for us all. As an adult, he’s dedicated to work to try to save people’s lives.
Snow was a calming force, bringing the four of us together in happy play, putting a stop to our childish fights. A male-dominated household in the 1980s, we wrestled and pounded each other with snowballs, seeing who could make the others yelp the loudest, but laughing and enjoying one another’s company and these moments of peace and beauty in nature.
Decades past that childhood, we’re now in our thirties and forties, living in different states, forced to communicate mostly by phone and video chat, especially over the past year, as we live through a worldwide pandemic. These memories seem more important to me now, as I miss my brothers, my closest and oldest friends, with whom I shared my best and most painful moments; falling in love, beginning our own families, and surviving the losses of important family members and friends. Snow has developed a particular poignancy as I’ve aged.
As I watch the rare snowfalls I’m lucky enough to witness in my thirties, I recall the wonder it meant to me as a child, and fondly reflect on a few other moments where snow provided the backdrop to important moments in my life. When I was sixteen, I sat on the lap of my first serious boyfriend, riding an inner tube down a hill. At six-five, he launched five-foot-two me onto his shoulders at the zoo, to see a baby elephant during the Festival of Lights. Crammed into the back seat of a car with his two best friends and mine, riding around, freezing fingers squeezed in his hand. Over two decades later, I smile at these memories. He broke my heart, and it seemed the worst pain I’d ever experience when it happened, but now, I laugh at the sweet naivete of sixteen-year-old me believing the worst thing that could happen was having a boy I thought I loved break up with me.
Two years later, I drove in near-blinding snow, on a dark highway to my university for a Friday-night open mic. I almost turned back several times out of fear of sliding off the road, timid as always. Later that night, in the back seat of a car with two friends riding up front on our way to a movie theater to meet another friend, my future husband and I talked nonstop and fell in love. The snow had stopped, and he held my hand as we crossed the parking lot, keeping me upright. Over two decades of life together have brought fewer snowfalls than I’d like, but every time it snows, I’m taken back to that night and the pure glee and giddiness of youthful love, now grown to a depth I could not have imagined then. Together, we have journeyed through graduate school, moves to different cities, careers, the loss of a beloved job, and the heartbreak of watching a sibling die. Like the depths of snow piling several feet on the ground, we have grown and built a beautiful life together.
Eleven years after we met, we held each other and the rest of our family in a hospital room, as Matt took his final breaths, succumbing to brain cancer after a six-year battle. I couldn’t catch my breath, holding his knee, watching his closed eyes and listening to his dying rasps. Matt was fearless. As a child, he would take risks like sledding face or back first down our hill. He once flipped over the handlebars of his bike smacking his chin on the road, resulting in stitches. He wept unabashedly when our cat was run over by a car, always vulnerable, even when it went too far. When we fought, as any children do, he would always apologize first. When diagnosed with cancer at twenty-one, he must have been terrified, but he never let it show. He turned to humor to put others at ease, letting his hair half grow in where radiation hadn’t killed it, literally one side of his head covered in hair and the other bald. He wore t-shirts mocking cancer. He began a blog, which featured his humor and deep levels of openness. His last post, entitled “Lacking Shame: the life of a medical guinea pig,” began “If I don’t make fun of it, then who’s gonna?” followed by the disclosure “WAY TMI for some people.” To this day, I admire his willingness to disclose detailed information about his diagnosis. I wish I had his courage. As I try to advocate for the disabled, a sufferer of chronic health conditions myself, I hope I am fulfilling the work he sought to do in his young life.
When Matt died, I lost a part of myself. Losing a family member is always painful; losing a sibling who was born less than two years after you, making it impossible to remember life without them, awakens your mortality in ways no other loss can. Every day, I’m reminded anew of his absence; every January, I relive his death on the 12th, suffering panic attacks and revisiting that hospital room in my mind. In the nine years since his death, I have attempted time and again to put into words this loss and its aftermath, and I am not yet satisfied that these words achieve that end, but they are something, and I hope that they resonate with someone, somewhere, who needs them right now. Many have suffered far worse, and I live in that knowledge. My suffering, my family’s suffering, is neither unique, nor more substantial than others’.
After the pronouncement of Matt’s death, we looked out the window, seeing gigantic flakes falling. Every snowfall brings him back to me, for a second or for hours. As the flakes get larger and the snowfall harder, I feel peace, that for a moment, I connect with his spirit. Texting photos and videos of snow has become a family tradition, making us children again, laughing and burning each other’s skin with frozen snow, and Matt is present, always there, even if only in spirit now.
These days, watching my dog leap through the snow, up to his chest, pure joy in his movements mesmerizes me. He holds one frozen paw in the air at a time, trying to walk on three, demanding to stay outside. I’m taken back to my childhood, frozen fingers, red face, and icy nose, begging my parents to let us stay out just a little longer. He, too, is small, full of pep, glorying in the peaceful quiet, the blinding whiteness. Each snowfall is cleansing, a rebirth, an opportunity to pause and hope. Snow is my refuge, my joy.
Laura Detmering is the Writing Center Coordinator at Spalding University. She holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition, an MA in English Literary History, and a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and has taught English Composition and Literature since 2004. She has published articles on the intersections of literacy, gender, sexuality, and social class in popular television series in Studies in Popular Culture and The Popular Culture Studies Journal, as well as poems in The Licking River Review and elsewhere. She is currently drafting academic articles on teaching composition and gender studies and a collection of creative nonfiction.
