It looks like Snow.

It looks like snow. Ultra light puffs that have nowhere to go in no
particular hurry, float gently. Whirls of excitement at the prospect of
a sudden flurry, blossom in the parts of my body reserved for such
unexpected thrills.
Even at the vaguest hint of snow, I find myself gripped in a paroxysm
of extreme nostalgia. It never fails to snag me with its seduction. Its
melancholic powers.

When I was 7 years old there was an exceptional period of snow. None of
us were used to or prepared for such great volumes of this great, white
manna.
For a nation whose weather forecasters daren't speak the S word,
substituting it with 'wintry showers' to avoid disappointment, there
was true euphoria that January. Actually, it was a rather local
phenomenon as I recall, affecting only the eastern parts of the
country. A cold front from Siberia. An icy gift from that desolate,
wolf-prowled land. Siberia had come to stay, if temporarily and I, in
my makeshift arctic suit of wool and mackintosh, would become its
temporary babushka.

No school of course. No way to get there, for one. And, even if one
were to conquer the mighty ranges of snowdrifts that blocked the roads,
the massive drop in temperature meant frozen pipes and frigid
classrooms.
I imagined the empty school. The snow in the playground would be deep
and unblemished, except perhaps near the bird table. There, a miasma of
trails would dissect the white blanket in all directions where birds
had vied for a spare seed or lump of fat.
The snow would fling its joyous glare into the hollow cloakrooms and
hallways. The silence would be complete as the school lay in a state of
eerie dormancy.

My home was more than three miles away from the school, in a separate
hamlet. There were no shops in my hamlet. We, my parents and I (my
little sister being far too little) made intrepid and torturously cold
expeditions to the next village's shop whose shelves were all but bare
and basking in the same, magnificent glow as the lonely desks and
chairs in the empty school.

A friend of the family was staying, as he quite frequently did. An old,
artist acquaintance of my mother's. He and I never got on. That was the
way we liked it. Despite him being nearly 40 years older than me, we
had a warring sibling-type relationship. He would bait and I would
whine and scold in a never-ending cycle.

In the summer, after a pick-your-own strawberry outing, he would fill
his bowl with fruit and cream. He would then set about mashing the
berries into a sickly, red-stained pulp. This, I believed, he did to
antagonize me. At some point I'd got it into my head that the mush in
his bowl resembled pureed thrush breasts. I was very specific about the
species. I would chastise him for his devious non-cruelty.

'How could you? You're a disgusting pig. I don't like you'

'Well, that's fine coz I don't like you either'.

He would never lock the bathroom door and my sister and I would often
burst in while he was bathing.

'Yuck' I would exclaim at the sight of his nakedness

'Ha!' he would spit, enjoying my embarrassment.

He knew as well as I that, even had he locked the door, my sister and I
would have peeked at him through the crack. We did this to anyone who
didn't know that one had to stuff toilet paper into the gap in the top
of the door. It was more out of habit that we did this than out of a
burning desire to glimpse nudity, but my mother's artist friend would
call us perverted. I hated that, as I couldn't stop myself.

He and I made one of those village shop treks together. Refusing to
walk with him, I instead marching 50 yards ahead, singing at the top of
my voice into the silent air. Singing, that is, until I realized that
he might hear me, and then stomping in silence. It wouldn't do, after
all, for him to think I was happy about us making the journey
together.

The road to the village was exposed to the sea across which those
wintry isobars had traveled. Even without extreme weather, the strong,
prevailing wind saw that all trees and bushes within nearly a mile of
the cliffs were leaning claws. What with the screaming gale that had
arrived with our borrowed Russian weather, the snow had drifted itself
into impressive tsunami. I remember thinking the effect was like that
of Moses, parting the red sea - the awesome colour print seen in R.E.
being one of the few etched in my mind.

My hands were very cold. Colder still after having thrown myself, along
with the artist friend of my mother's, into one the snow waves.
Breeching our impass? in the excitement of being imbedded in the drift,
we wriggled in the powder. We didn't know anything about snow angels,
pleased enough with the chaotic imprints of our chaotically wriggling
bodies. After so much snowfall and darkness, this day was bright. Still
very cold, but sunny. Sound was still dampened terrifically by the dry,
light snow and yet the silence seemed to hum, sub-sonically. There we
were, close to freezing, close to being blinded by the intense
refection. We were unconcerned with anything that would detract from
the sheer fun and exhilarating powers of this exotic weather.

Later that day, after returning home, I was in a foul mood. I have a
feeling I spent much of my childhood in that state, but that particular
day I was sure to have blamed it on having had to spend all that time
with my mother's artist friend - the memory of our shared pleasure
already stifled by our history of mutual abhorrence.
My little sister, always sweet natured where I was sullen and
unforgiving, was outside with my father and my mother's artist friend.
They were making an igloo. I refused to view this as fun. In later
years, I was often puzzled at my own absence in photos of the igloo
making. Why would I want to miss making an igloo in my own garden?
Surely a once in a lifetime opportunity&;#8230;but I often forget
about the terminal sulkiness with which I had been afflicted.

A couple of years later, my mother's artist friend was diagnosed with
lung cancer. After what seemed to be effective chemotherapy, he
deteriorated and died. A tumor had sneaked into his head while the
doctors were diverted by his lungs.

We remained enemies up until he was too ill to have the energy, at
which point I didn't know how to act. I think I wanted to sit by his
bed and do all that hand-holding stuff that people are supposed to do,
but it seemed like too much of a change of heart. It would look like a
farce.
And so he died and I didn't hold his hand.

Now I look out of the window at what looks like the tentative
beginnings of snowfall. I open the window and look out. It is raining.
The fluffy, floating puffs I mistook for snowflakes are tiny insects.
The disappointment isn't quite crushing. What can one expect? It always
rains these days. We never get snow like we did back when I was 7.