A True Delicacy

First published in the print column Strictly Haresay

There’s a danger to these long, confining winters, and I’m not talking about the risk of frostbite or getting stuck in the snow or wrecking a vehicle due to icy roads, though those are all valid hazards, as well.

No, the danger I’m talking about is the stillness; the silent heartbeat of the earth in the bleak midwinter with no bird, cricket or cicada songs to liven the landscape. No industrious buzzing of insects, or tress in full crown to rustle in the wind.

There’s too much idle time in the quiet to think and remember, when the distraction of activities and the busyness of hands is greatly limited.

As I write this, I recall that it was on this day many years ago that I went on a first date with my one-day-to-be-husband.

Auspicious as the occasion was, I wasn’t looking for a husband. I was quite occupied and content with my work in journalism at the time, and actually mistook him for the South Dakota state climatologist with whom I had a scheduled interview for a story I was writing. But our chance meeting that day led to a first date later on, and then years of adventure and laughs and love…

The snowing sky this afternoon is steely blue, casting a kind of enchantment over the snow-moulded world, joining forces with this nostalgia as it descends, covering me over like the gentle falling snow outside my window envelops the garden as it sleeps.

Through my busy times, in the world of work and worry, most often my memories, too, are safely tucked away, asleep.

But these slow days of winter, when the hours of darkness are long, and the temperatures hard-biting—when life itself seems to be quietly waiting, dreaming—I remember. The walls fall away and memories come out to play, rolling over, exposing their soft white underbelly to me, knowing not, how perilous a position that is. How fragile and delicate they are. Precious. Like snowflakes intricately and beautifully formed, that so quickly melt away by the mere touch of my tongue.