Tapioca Snow

In Los Angeles, we rarely see snow. Decades go by before a snowflake remains and winters only reach a desert cool that chills your bones but never reaches snowfall. Not the cold needed for that soft layer of flurries like a fresh shaven snow cone. I longed for those winters, not because it fit the perfect picture of an icy paradise. Under those layers of snow, perhaps I could discover lost memories of my father. The times before we moved to the sandy beaches where we built snow forts instead of snow castles. There were memories of him I had long forgotten, buried & frozen in snow.

I knew why Demeter sobbed in the wintertime, why the skies wept in sorrow. Missing Persephone changed the fiber of her core. I had changed too. No longer did I miss the snow flurries because it meant no school and sledding. I missed the snow because in those little ice fragments were whoville-like villages that contained pieces of my fathers life. Snow heavy winters with crockpot soup meant he was still here.

Sometimes, we get little pieces of icey wonder called graupel or tapioca snow. Water droplets that freeze on falling snowflakes. Holding it in your hands it seems like hail, but for me, it’s pieces of my past. Not quite snow, but something new layered on something familiar. I couldn’t bring my dad back, but I could layer the memories I had of him like a warm blanket on a cold night.