my heart, in bloom
Late winter may not be the season that many think of as beauty and blooming wonders, but for me, in Europe, that’s what it will always be.
For someone growing up in a country of sun and sometimes rain, snow is a mystical thing. A manifestation of stories and imagination. More real than fairies, but not by much.
Snow - real, white, fall from the sky like magic, snow - is far better than I ever imagined it could be. I imagined some pretty amazing things, but nothing came close to how good it really is.
It’s been a few weeks since we came home, but still my heart is lost here. It’s over there somewhere, with the footprints of the birds, lost in time, between worlds and between places, wandering among the catacombs.
The stories, when I come here to write, to leave a tale of our wondrous wanderings, come out jumbled, tangled up in the feelings that travelled with us.
The one clear picture, the one that I can still feel and touch, is the snow.
And there, if I look, is where I can see my heart. Not lost, after all. Just faraway.
I suspect I may actually have been somewhat lost all my life in this hot, dry country and, for a few glorious weeks, I was home.
Snow.
on 2 May, 2009 bakerina said . . .
Blooming beauty and wonders in snow? Oh, honey, yes. Absolutely. I understand, with everything in my being, I understand.