It was the first snow I ever saw. All I knew about snow was from the Swiss calendar hanging in our hot kitchen and from Grimm’s fairy tales in the heavy book with the dark cover.
My dad woke me up as he was opening the metal shutters with their high pitched squeak. He was breathing onto the glass and wiping the steam with the back of his hand. It made high squeaking sounds like ducks racing for a new piece of bread. I stood up on my bed, threading my head into the warm loop he created with his body, his two big arms and the steamy window.
Outside everything was shockingly white. I could barely recognize my own neighborhood. The familiar yellow, busy, angular view outside my window was replaced with a monochrome, silent color of unknown texture. Everything, the porch, the fence, the dog house, the cars, the trees, the road, the roofs, even the top of the electricity poles, everything was covered with untouched, pure white. And everything stood still as in a life size black and white photograph. It looked awesome and grand; it looked astonishing but it did not look pretty. Something scary and alienating accompanied the white cover — a feeling I still get when I watch planets in outer space or think about men on the moon.
I was not as happy as my brothers were to hear that there was no school. It was the beginning of my first grade year, and I loved going to school. It was a reminder for me and everyone else how independent and mature I was. Naomi, my teacher, with her immense patience for my endless questions and her quiet smile was my new avid love. Where was she on this white day? Who would answer all my questions today?
Thirty years later I was driving with my boyfriend to New Mexico for my first ski vacation. He appeared in my little studio apartment full of energy and excitement, “no school today” he said a bit too loud. I felt an unarticulated twinge; something awakened — a memory — frozen and raw. We drove for hours in the snow as the blinding white leaking through the edges of my sunglasses. His chatty and eager flow subsided while my compulsive search for words to understand my displacement grew louder in my head. We arrived before dark and hastily rented frozen ski boots while warming our hands with caps of hot chocolate. The snow, thick and bulky, had a different quality than I remembered it.
In the Jerusalem of 1966, the streets were blocked and no one could go anywhere even though the snow was only a few inches high. My dad did not seem happy to stay at home either. He had feared that some of his employees would walk to work only to find him not there. The unfamiliar snow threatened him. He already envisioned it melting and entering through every opening in the house. The only thing left to do was to calculate how much food we had at home and how much gas we had to feed our one and only furnace.
My mom’s childish, celebratory enthusiasm, once met with my dad’s anxiety soon turned into vicious anger — he failed her again. No festivity for him, no silly playfulness, and no snowmen with ludicrous carrots stuck as a nose. When disaster is knocking at the door, there is no time for silly games. I remembered one of the fairy tales about the butterfly who played during the summer while the ants worked hard preparing for the winter. My mother with her immature wish to have a party seemed as reckless as a flitting butterfly. Her anger made our small house seem even smaller and his anxiety made it as big and empty as one of Grimm’s ghost castles.
He skied on the fancy blue and black trails all day long while I practiced, falling as gracefully as possible in the beginner’s area. I wanted to tell him that I hated the unstable snow, that it might melt and flood us all, that I was cold and lonely, and that I wished we could just build a snowman. But I didn’t.
Taking our shoes off was harder than putting them on as our fingers and toes were frozen. I wanted to cry without explaining; wishing my dad was holding me tight with his big strong arms. We went to our heated cabin in silence.
My brothers soon left to play with the older kids. It was only my dad, my mom and me in the house. The air was thick and heavy; it smelled like wet wooly clothes left too close to the fire.
Looking at both of my parents it was impossible to take sides. They both seemed ludicrous and pathetic. The big arms of my dad and the ominous look of my mom were reduced into insignificance. Like seeing for the first time that puppets have strings. They looked for the first time small and pitiful.
I wanted to get out of the house. It was the first time I felt that my life was separate from theirs, that all their desperation, looming catastrophe and seething anger were not inevitable. I could make different choices. This kernel of hope for my future did not last long before it was wrapped with guilt at leaving my parents behind.
On our way back from New Mexico he drove in silence making sparse remarks about not arriving before dark. “Nasty storm” he said, while wiping the window with the back of his hand making little squeaks. Yes, its the ducks, I finally remembered, the ducks in the little pond squeaking enthusiastically when I would through a piece of bread at them. The hail whipped and lashed at the car threatening to demolish our precarious, rented envelope. “All I want is to build a snowman before dark”, I suddenly said. An enclosing cloud of steam rose from our wet clothes pushing into the remaining space, filling the car with a damp bitter smell.
I opened the door and walked out, like I was lifting a page to a brand new month on the calendar. I started to walk. I saw my brothers’ footsteps going up the hill, lonely and estranged as Neil Armstrong’s footsteps in the moon’s dust. I did not want to follow. Instead, I veered towards the flawless untouched snow.