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THE NARRATIVE ARC
The Snow, the Pope and My Sister
The strangest moments in the present can land you right back to the past
In what has to be the last snowfall of the season, I wait anxiously for its beginning. Since I was a little girl, my attention was trained toward the sky, as I tried to spot the very first flake. Similarly, I waited to mark and mourn the end of it all.
What snow does
I am still that little girl. Watching the snow is a meteorological tranquilizer. There is nothing else, so white and so soft that can completely cover the disarray, the ugliness, and the evidence of our carelessness with our surroundings.
The antics of my childhood were time limited, but magic, with unique abilities to make things like snowballs, forts and my beloved snow angels. I could fall and not be hurt and fly on anything with an incline.
My weather website says “31 minutes” to go. How they know this, I don’t know. I am usually skeptical of everything. But not this. I want it too much.
I wait and watch
As I impatiently scroll down the screen, there is another large picture that is all white. Plain, sloping with a generous belly, it is Pope Francis, smiling and humbly dressed…
