Posted: Friday, 19 December 2008 12:52PM
Is It Snowing Over There Yet?
Steve Corbett Reporting
Friday, December 19, 2008
Every time Jennifer Lopez calls me on the phone she asks the same question.
“Is it snowing over there yet?” she says in her soft six-year-old voice.
Snow is a mystery to her.
Snow never falls where she lives on California’s Central Coast. She has never seen the white piles that seem so inviting in the movies she watches on her TV. She has never made a snow angel or a snowball or built a snow man.
“No.” I usually tell her. “It’s not snowing over here yet.”
Jennifer always sounds disappointed.
I sound a little disappointed, too.
I’m not somebody who needs snow to survive. I don’t ski and don’t make angels. I haven’t built a snow man for many years and my urge to sculpt an igloo or a fort disappeared a long time ago.
But I’d change my mind if Jennifer came to visit.
We could go sledding in my Scranton Hill Section neighborhood. I could pull her on a sled. We could throw snowballs. And, of course, we could build a snow man. Come to think of it, I might build my own snow man one of these days just for practice.
I’d find the perfect pieces of coal to sparkle as eyes in the cold winter air.
Jennifer would also make the perfect snow angel.
I’m her godfather, by the way, her patrone, as they say in Spanish in her neighborhood.
That means she and I have a bond that goes on forever.
So, when the snow started falling this morning, I thought about what she might think about the prediction for our first real snow storm of the season. And I thought about what I’ll tell her when we talk this weekend.
I’ll tell her that in some ways snow piles look a little like the sand near the fields where her daddy works cutting broccoli. I’ll tell her that the piles can be enormous and that she can slide and laugh all the way from the top to the bottom.
Jennifer has seen her share of sand in California and in Mexico where her relatives live.
But she has never seen a snow dune.
Maybe, if she comes to visit, we can go to Sno Mountain too.
When she gets older she might want to ski or snow board.
That suggestion will make her laugh, but I can tell her that snow boarding is like surfing. She has seen surfers in California and in Mexico, but has never seen anybody ride down a snow mountain on a board.
Maybe I’ll start snow boarding at 57, I’ll tell her.
I can hear her laughter over the telephone line now as I tell her that her daddy, Benito, can join us on the slopes. Come to think of it, I don’t think Benito has ever seen snow, either.
That goes for mommy, big sister Lucero, and big brother Anthony, for that matter.
Thinking about my family of friends on the West Coast as I drove through this morning’s snow made me realize just how much we have to learn from each other. I’ve learned many lessons in life from every member of the Lopez family. And I hope they have learned something from me.
Mostly, we learned to trust each other.
Despite cultural differences that keep some people apart and at each other’s throats, we learned to love each other, too.
At Jennifer’s baptism, she wore a snow white dress that symbolized innocence.
I see that innocence in each snowfall. As cold and as painful as a winter storm can be, I see the chance of comfort and the opportunity for people to help each other make it through even the most confusing white-out conditions.
I hear that innocence in Jennifer’s voice every time we talk on the phone.
Trust and love and wonder all blend into a mix that’s as reassuring as watching a blizzard from behind the frosted pane of a window in a warm house full of the smells of hot cocoa loaded with tiny melted marshmallows.
Jennifer would like that.
I would like that.
Such simple blessings are part of the winter wonderland of the heart where it’s always “snowing over there.”
|
Corbett
E-Mail
Print
