When I was little, winter boot shopping with my dad was a significant yet a traumatic experience. I wanted the pretty boots I had seen on a Nickelodeon TV show, but my dad was convinced I needed heavy, funny looking army boots, as if we lived in Antarctica and broke bread with eskimos. It always ended in tears.
My dad was right, of course. I did need boots that were water-proof and warm, ones that went up to my knees so I wouldn’t go down with the flu after wading through the thick blankets of snow that covered my land in the north of Europe 4 months a year.
Nostalgia overtakes me when I dig up memories of getting ready for the last day of school before winter break. Dressed in black and white, no backpack with me, just a little bag to hold the mark report of the first term. A short concert from the school choir performing a well-known Christmas song. A tall Christmas tree covered in paper decorations made by children younger than me. Lit candles hanging dangerously at the end of a sharp branch, threatening to burn the whole tree down but never really doing so. I glanced at the boy I used to like, sitting three rows down from me. Said a gleeful good-bye to all my friends as if parting for a long trip to wonderland. And most vividly – a snowball fight in front of the school entrance.
Another memory. Mid-October, years later, older but none the wiser, holding the same values as I did as a child in a snowball fight. But a different school and a higher grade. It was the birthday of someone I used to call a friend, but I cannot remember exactly who it was anymore. Changes – aren’t they strange?
I was walking down the hall, right by all the lockers and noticed people walking by with snowflakes slowly melting away from their shoulders. Exclamations about the first snow erupted and excitement was almost tangible amongst the schoolchildren. Two days later we all had a snowball fight, once again. I guess some things are spared by the ruthless wheel of time.
Here’s another one. I was 4 or 5 and the layers of snow reached somewhere above my head at that point in winter. Me and my sister would dress up in our chunky snow overalls and wallow around in the icy fluff. I’d be lying there, not feeling even a touch of cold in my outfit, looking closely at the billions of snowflakes stuck together. Suddenly an urge to taste the frozen particles arose. There was no one to forbid this and what bad could really happen? So, I did. After the first mouthful I ate some more. And some more. The latter attempts did not go unnoticed by my sister who shouted “DON’T EAT IT! DO YOU WANT WORMS TO LIVE IN YOUR STOMACH?” I stopped but my sister went as far as to rat me out to our grandmother. She then, too, lectured me.
I ate snow after that anyway.
My parents gave me ice skates for my name day (a celebration of one’s given name in Latvia - mine is on the 25th of November) when I was in elementary school. In December it was well below zero degrees Celsius outside. Everything was frozen. Recent road reconstruction work had left ditches next to our house very deep and wide. The water inside of them froze as well, understandably. So almost every day of my winter break I put on my brand-new ice skates and glided back and forth over the ditch until it was dark outside.
The first time I felt real concern about the climate was three years ago when I travelled home from London for the holidays. Upon my return I was rewarded with a beautiful, white, sparkling blanket of snow. My family and I went to the forest looking for a Christmas tree, dressed in the adult equivalent to snow overalls. The white blanket faded away a month later, in January. There weren’t 4 months of snow a year anymore. Frankly, we were lucky to see any snow at all.
It got worse. The following summer was the hottest recorded in the history of Latvia.
I remember complaining about cold and rainy summers. Now I quietly hope for them to return.
The next winter was worse. No snow at all in the two months I spent home for the holidays. There was only rain.
Summer was once again record breaking. The hottest summer ever, not only for Latvia. For the whole world.
I have come to think of snow as a precious jewel, found only at a perfected temperature, under the right circumstances. I wake up every day of winter wishing to find the image outside my window painted in white. I open the Weather App almost constantly, checking for a snow-positive forecast. It’s the new Instagram for me.
This winter is more hopeful. There has been more snow than last year, but there’s still a record-breaking number of warm winter days. Christmas is next week and I’m looking to find if a white Christmas this year can be arranged after all. Just to give us all an illusion that everything is fine, that our planet isn’t dying a slow, painful death.
That my childhood memories won’t become fairy tales told to my children and the generations afterwards. If such do come.
Don’t ask me about what I want for Christmas. All I ever wish for as of late is snow.
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