It is snowing and the world is different upon us.
“It doesn’t make any sound,” Jones says to me, “not like rain.”
How strange the world and its revelations. I think about trying to tell him water is many things. How depending on what it is responding to, it can be rain, snow, steam or ice, but settle for, “Each one of us is many things, Jones, and change lives in our very core. Everything you see is always becoming something else.”
And so what is truth, Jones might ask.
But he does not.
He is smiling, trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue. The walk back takes longer today. He finds a mound of snow and must stand upon it, throwing chunks of it to the ground like King Kong. He walks along each fence he comes to as if a cliff edge. Hand over hand, meticulously grabbing hold of each bar as it presents itself. He circles trees, makes snow angels, rolls around, leaving his scent on this new world.
A neighbour just before our home has a front garden. Short cedar bushes and trees, all of them capped with the most perfect snow. Jones cuts through this pristine forest, a part of it rather than intrusion upon it. Tangled with trees and ice and leaves and snow, his neurons, everything within him firing at full and awesome capacity. He is happy and alive, moving forward into this world as intimately and immediately as possible. His skin as fair and virginal as this newly falling snow.
I hear a tapping at a window and look to our apartment and there’s Rachelle watching. I point this out to Jones, who pops out of his forest. He sees Rachelle smiling so brightly and is transformed. Our dawdling is over. He drops everything and runs as fast as he can to her, to this point of light that simultaneously exists inside and outside of him–the glowing permanence that will centre the rest of his days.
