"The First Time," by Mary Chittle

I was 19, the first time I saw snow. I awoke that morning in late Autumn and the air was different. The smell was different. Beautifully strange and unfamiliar. Crisp, sharp, and somehow almost frighteningly clean, burning my lungs through the open window. I always sleep with the windows open–it helps me remember to breathe. My nose was cold, my face the only part of me exposed to winter’s first kiss.

Slowly, I slid out of bed, gathering Grandmother’s quilt around my shoulders, shivering beneath my threadbare nightgown.

The chill reached out with tendrils of frost and wrapped me in the embrace of an old friend, despite this being our first meeting. The cold drove the drowsiness from my eyes, the cobwebs of sleep from my thoughts. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, the frozen air

hollowing my chest, spreading its frosty greeting through each limb. It felt wonderful, like a true, clean breath. Turning towards the window, I hesitated: something held me back from rushing. It seemed irreverent to break this moment with undue haste.

I padded across the room on stockinged feet, the worn wooden floor creaking with cold. I reached for the curtains, where a sliver of silver sunlight slipped from the split between them, highlighting the dirt beneath my fingernails, the cracked and dry skin of my knuckles, my

pale, thin wrists contrasting with the faded colors of the quilt. With one hand still clutching the worn quilt around my shoulders, the other pulled back the curtain, and winter rushed in. Blinded by the brilliant blaze of sunlight on the snow, I spun away, the quilt falling to the floor as I lifted my hand to cover my eyes.

I cracked one lid open, turning back slowly to face the onslaught of crystalline light. The edges of the window around the muntins were frosted and I reached out with my hand and drew a circle. My finger came away wet, leaving behind a shaky curve carved into the frost on the window.

I finally looked past the glass and my breath froze in my chest. My eyes went wide, the glare of the sun forgotten as I struggled to process the beauty I beheld. The whole world was transformed, blanketed in white. So pure, so clean, so perfect. It was as if God had upended a bucket of white paint on the world, erasing all the ugliness: the pockmarked streets, the weathered walls of tired houses, the weary trees with sagging branches and the rusted, worn- down bicycles. Everything was made new. The street a perfect, untouched sea of glittering snow, unmarred by the passage of slogging feet or burdened carts. The houses seemed to stand a little taller, renewed by the breath of life that had fallen with each snowflake. The tree branches bowed low with reverence, proudly displaying their new attire, each one clothed in layers of soft frozen crystals. The rust of the bicycles had become hidden among snowdrifts, bits of color peeking through, as eager as I to view the icy paradise that had been born overnight.

The sight of the world reborn filled my heart and restored my soul. If this meaningless, downtrodden place could be made so beautiful, so opposite of what it once had been, then maybe I could be too. The world before me was a clean slate, a blank page, empty of previous sorrows and transgressions, full of possibilities and promise. I was 19, the first time I saw snow, 19 the first time I met hope.