snowman

I've often wondered how it's possible for such a beautiful line to exist. A sentence that captures a moment so pristine, that's otherwise cluttered in darkness. Try as I might I've never written anything this beautiful. Haven't even come close. 

This phrase hangs on my mirror, a grainy black and white photo taped to the glass. My eyes gloss over it every day, and every day the words hit me just the same: a sudden strike to my heart, a prick to my veins and there I go, lost in the euphoria of pondering meanings. 

What is it about these words that strike me so deeply? That make my heart swell and my lungs stop? They're just ordinary words: wish, snowman, hands. Nothing special. But then they're strung together and they mean something different. 

"Often I wish this would all be over, Liesel, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands."

Maybe it's because the grief is so tangible. The despair so potent. I feel it hanging off each word Max speaks: I wish this for all to be over. The war, the hiding from the Nazis, the lack of food, his freezing shelter in Liesel's basement. He wishes this war had never happened, that his family wasn't murdered, that his friends weren't being massacred for their beliefs.

His days are dark. 

Sometimes I think my days have been dark too. But not like this. 

And then Liesel comes in with the snowman in her hands, and it's a like a faint scattering of light that settles over the gloom, providing just a bit of warmth. Just a bit of comfort. 

Yes, he wants it to be over. But Liesel makes it so he can make another day. She gives him the memory of this snowman, this emblem of hope. And one day when his life is better, he'll think back on it and wish that just for a second he could step once more into the gloom and despair just to see it in her hands again. 

*******

Sometimes I feel like that. 

Yes, my days have been dark, but I won't even pretend they're near as near to Max. I won't pretend they're as dark as many people. I'm very lucky. 

But there have been times when my life felt so stunned by grief and death that there seemed to be no end in sight, no answers, no distant light at the end of the tunnel. And I was suddenly struck with how comically human I was, that I could try to be as good and as kind as possible but it didn't grant me the ability to fix anything. All I could do was reside in my humanness, my seemingly uselessness, and wait. 

Wait for what? Who knew. 

Sometimes I wonder how I survived those days. And then as I peruse my memories, flip through them lazily like an album, I catch glimpses of my own snowmen. Snowmen offered to me in outstretched hands. 

Running with my sister through a snow-covered baseball field. 

Two small children in an Italian airport peeking over my shoulder to watch me play a game on my phone. And even though I don't understand what they are saying, I hold it out to them, let them have a turn until it's time for my flight to go. 

Sitting in the parking lot behind a Romanian shop feeding the stray puppies hidden beneath a car. A teenaged girl comes out into the cold with a bowl of milk, and in between her broken English words I'm able to understand that she's worried about them too. 

And again I'm reminded of the goodness of people.

Ove asking me to send her literal snow in the mail, and I have to say, "It will melt, you egg." So instead I build her a snowman and send her a picture of it. 

Walks during a weary autumn, one spent in lockdown, where we scour the campus for leftover fruit. 

I love all of the days I've been alive because of the snowmen people have offered me. And I miss all of the days too, even the bad ones. Sometimes I wish I could go back, even for a second. Just to see them once more.