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| Photo courtesy Craig M. Brandt |
I turn my head toward the front door of our colonial-style home to take in the beauty of a red bow on a hand-tied wreath of green spruce boughs, all lit by the glow of the porch lamp. Snow is falling. The long, narrow drive to the quaint one-car garage is covered in deep snow. It is ten p.m., and I am happy. I’ve parked my Saab near the edge of the side road I live on so that I will only have to shovel snow away from the car’s length. I feel strong as I lift the cubes of snow, tossing each shovelful higher, creating a pile of snow in the shape of a cone stacked in an ice cream parlor. When I pause, it is because I am enthralled by the night’s quietude and the vision of slanting snow, seen only through a gauzy absence of darkness under the nearby streetlight. The sound of an occasional car or plow on the main road is muffled to barely a memory of its passing. Clumps of snow fall unexpectedly off branches in soft landings that round out surfaces for their soft bellies to rest upon.
MOMENTS AT SOUTH VILLAGE BEACH
On a bitingly cold winter’s day I’ve come to the beach our family visited in summers. I have stopped to renew my love for this mid-Cape beach while on my way to visit my dad, who is in Rhode Island, two more hours from here. Never before here this time of year, I learn just how cold December’s onshore breeze can be, and how cold my face can be as I turn toward the ocean, determined to take home a beach memory. My feet, in shoes, quickly become numb and stiff as winter’s refrigerated sand drains their unprotected warmth. I hold my stance longer than is sensible, wanting, wanting . . . until the cold reality isolates me from my resolve. My car is close by.
MOMENTS AT PORTLAND, MAINE
I look at the Atlantic Ocean as its waves charge the rock-lined coast and, finding no entry through its resistance, explode in an ecstasy of ice crystals plumbing the air. Flat, sun-glared, granite rocks sheathed in ice have relinquished their summer role as orchestra section seats at a performance of ocean gazing. Was the photographer seeking winter’s face in the beauty of the Atlantic? Or had he been driving by, and mesmerized, decide to park and take photos until his hands were numb and his head and neck, although covered by a hat and scarf, became pin-pricked by the undaunted chill?
My realization is, “Seasonal memories attached to feelings and qualities may return for a second enjoyment, reminding us of what still breathes within us.”