Birthday Wishes

“The first fall of snow is not only an event, but it is a magical event.  You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, where is it to be found?”   J. B. Priestley

My birthday is in February, and unless my birthday happened to fall on a Saturday or Sunday while I was growing up, I had to go to school on my special day.  During those years that presented me with a weekday birthday…well, let’s just say that I made a great big birthday wish the night before “my day”:  a wish for snow.  Not just a little snow, but enough snow to close school for the day!  I imagined how wonderful it would be to awaken to a beautiful, deep snow; it would be enchanting.  So when I recently read J. B. Priestley’s quote (above), it transported me back in time to all those years that I had wished for birthday snows.  In my twelve years of schooling, I don’t ever remember my birthday wish coming true.  College was a different story….snow began falling in January and often stayed on the ground until early March.  However, by the time my birthday rolled around, the snow was trampled, packed, and dirty…there was nothing magical about it. The magic and enchantment of a new snow lies in its pristine condition—it falls softly, gently, silently throughout the night, and as dawn shines its early light you are privileged to see an untouched, spotless, clean, fresh, pure world—a white blanket without even rabbitt tracks or tire tracks—totally unblemished.  And if it happens to also be one of those snows where every limb of every tree is “smacked” with snow…well, you are beholding one beautiful sight.  I sometimes imagine God looking down at Earth and saying, “Hmmm, things are pretty hectic down there. I think I’ll send a beautiful snow to slow everyone down.  I want folks to sit back and marvel at what I’ve done.”  And for a brief moment, time seems to stand still…I am spellbound by the beauty surrounding me.  It takes my breath away.

“Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

(c) 2015 Leslie O. Kelley

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