Trusting the snow fall
A little retrospective
It is a Sunday night. Snow is coming down at a steady pace and the trees are stunning in their wintry coverings. The past two days, my walks in the woods have included my favorite company—good friends and snowflakes playfully falling, reminding me of why I love winter. The quiet, the stillness, the silent downward descent of those icy crystals—it all brings me a peacefulness, a pause, a moment to be present.
A dutch oven full of a rich full vegetable broth with garlic, onions, carrots, celery, and a hint of white wine; small chicken meatballs that are perfect rounded bites of ground chicken, parsley, garlic, toasty bread crumbs, parmesan cheese; small ovals of pasta, just big enough to soak up the broth; and deep leafy green spinach adding an earthiness, a hardiness to the bowl. Soft, flannel pajama bottoms; a well-loved sweatshirt from a favorite ski mountain in Vermont, sherpa-lined slippers, and a cozy flannel blanket. This is the hygge of winter life that I relish.
Z returns to college tomorrow after a break in which having him around for dinner felt like a treat given all of his social obligations. L has been knee-deep in college acceptances and the reality that he will most likely be a plane ride away is settling in. M has continued to try new things and figure out what he enjoys. Braces come off in a week, driving lessons are a regular thing. The last evidence of boyhood is quickly fading, falling away with the quiet inevitability as the snow outside my window.
Our holidays were quiet this year—one of the first in many years that didn’t include either a visit from my parents or a trip down to see my sisters and their families. We celebrated instead with friends here, sharing Christmas Eve with our neighbors who are chosen family as we have done for more than decade. A new addition joined us at the table, as a boyfriend shared his first holiday with us, subtly shifting the dynamic and the focus of conversation toward getting to know him.
I felt such delight in simply being with our two families—seeing these young women who, not so long ago, were running through the campsite after dark with our boys, playing Slenderman, shrieking with the delicious anticipation of being captured. I think of how many hot, sticky summer days we spent together at the Cape. How many games of Quirkle and Pit we played. How many times we comforted each other’s children when knees were scraped or feelings were hurt. How many miles C and I have walked side by side with our dogs, and how many times she has listened as I talked through my worries and fears, frustrations and disappointments.
And although Z was out of the house more than he was home, more distant and irritable than feels typical for him, I still felt such deep gratitude at having our family here, gathered under one roof.
I started to write this periplum of motherhood almost three years ago: 31 months ago in June 2023. Z had just graduated from high school and the realization that I was entering a new phase of motherhood, one shaped by departures rather than daily presence, was beginning to overtake me. I struggled, at times mightily, to let go of that role. To adjust to a reality in which more of Z’s life was lived away from our home than within it. To a life in which I knew very few of the people who populated his days.
Although Z can have quite a lot to say if you catch him at the right moment and ask about the right subject, he can also be stereotypically boyish in his one-word answers to my requests that he offer at least an outline of his collegiate life, if not a bit of color to fill it in.
And while I was letting so much of that closeness, that intimacy of life together with Z go, I found myself thrown into the deep end of parenting his brother, L. The push and pull, the back and forth, the anxiety and the worry about how to parent a teenager who pushes boundaries, takes risks, and threatens to break your heart every weekend.
All of it—the letting go, the hand-wringing worry—came back to trust.
Trust that Z would come home. That he would answer when I called. That he would be up for dinner sometimes. That he would find his people at college. That he would love his classes. That he would make it out in the world on his own.
Trust that L, too, would come home. That he would tell me where he was going and with whom. That he would call if he was in trouble, if he needed a ride, if he had pushed the limits too far. That he would be as honest as he could. That he, too, would make it out in the world.
Trust that M will find his place in the world. That he would tell me if he was struggling. That he will not feel too much pressure to be like Z. Or like L. That he will find that path that works for him. That he will make it out in the world.
I can’t control what is happening to our country. I can’t control what the world these young men and their peers are launching into looks like or how it will treat them. I have little control over how these young men will make their place in the world, how they will treat the people who come into their lives. The days of guiding and nurturing, teaching and raising them with morals and values are in the rearview.
But when I sit watching the snow, quietly falling, unaware of anything except the journey to the ground, I know that they will find beauty, they will find softness, they will find love. Because it is here. It is always here. In the delicate dance of the snowflake twirling down, down, down to blanket the cold ground. In the rich, garlicky smell of a warm winter broth. In the early morning conversation about Carl Jung. In the delight over a set of dice with small pink brains held in the resin. In a wall full of album covers that the boy chose and arranged. In the love I have for these boys. And the trust that love will continue to surround them, falling lightly all around, and blanketing them much like the snow.
