Finding the Different—and Seeing the Good

White stretches long reaching to the horizon where it curves seamless into the sky, over my head. A cocoon of monotone silence.

The frozen world can preserve, but it is cold welcome to stand static and alone…sense of self captured like some ancient beast in an iceberg—extinct and yet still here.

I snuggle my nose down into the collar of my coat, thankful for the heat preserved inside it. A short squeal and swish, and my son lands pell-mell at my feet. A mound of blue and grey against the snow.

“Mom! Come sled with me!” His joy crashing into the frozen quiet.

And so, he and I race down the hill, melting the mounds of flakes into a race course for our sleds, beating back the frozen. Until the cold begins to drip into our boots, our gloves. I send the boy in for hot cocoa and pick up the conquering gear—sleds, shovels, a lone hat.

I grin up into the sky, stand as one of the trees reaching up to scratch a joyous hole in the cocoon. A tinkle of sound from the wind chimes draws my curiosity and I stumble down the hill.

When an army of birds bursts from the arms of a tree, I watch their race—billowing, twisting—until they disappear behind the invisible horizon.

They’ve somehow broken free of the world in which I’m wrapped.

But now, now I see that my world is not suffocating sameness. Each individual flake in the immeasurable piles is different. The creek—skimmed in ice—tumbles into a bend.

I turn, trot up the hill, and burst through the door, shaking the last bits of cocoon onto the floor where they shift—melting, changing, giving in at last.

This was written in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt: Different. The rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing (although I can’t stop myself a little. I am an editor after all.).

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