It has been snowing again since last night.  The thought of going outside to warm the car up, is not a welcoming one. 

My coat was covered in snowflakes in just a short distant from the front door to the car.  The snowflakes were light and puffy and adhered lightly on my coat.   I looked around my surroundings and became transfixed by the serenity.  The falling snow under the early morning light like the white flower petals dancing in the air and then fallen on the branches, the bushes and the ground.  It was like a sheet of white silk lightly covering them all.

My hand was touching the car handle, but I couldn’t turn it, I did not want to disturb this moment of soundlessness in my surroundings.  I wanted to take it all in.  I wanted to remember how beautiful it is.  I wanted to remember that not all snowing days are always as gloomy as the past few weeks. 

Reality always wins.  I opened the door and started the car.  The melody from CD filled the air, it fitted the moment perfectly.  I became a snowman after clearing the snow off the windshield and windows.   I started to jump up and down, moving my arms in the air to shake off the snow.  I opened my arms and started turning around, I was dancing in the snow.   Similar imagines flow through my mind – my first snow fall.

I was walking out of the school library in the twilight after staying there the whole day trying to make sense of what was in the text book.    The street light was lite and I could see little white powder falling down.   It seemed weightless in the air, on the tree branches, and it melted when it hit the ground.

Wow! Snow!  A huge smile was on my face, I stood in the middle of the pass way and took it all in.  It was thousand times more beautiful than what I had imagined.   I jerked my head to shake off the snow on my hair, and my arms were dancing in the air tried to catch the snow flakes,  I stuck out my tongue  tried to taste the snow…….

“Isn’t it beautiful, the first snow of the season?”   A voice directed at me.   I was afraid to talk in English then, but his smile made me feel welcome, so we started a conversation.  The snow broke my shyness, and helped me to have wonderful friends who helped me to break into the American culture that I knew I belong in, but was afraid to cross.

How I forgot that girl who was dancing in the snow fall under the twilight and street light with a warm, kind, and gentle boy who had became a wonderful friend!

The nice boy and his friends became my champions in learning the core of American culture.

__________________________________________________________________

After reading the Ohio rape case, I was so stunned to see of how little value of humanity and mortality those teenagers had and still have little after the whole incident explored in the news.   I was wondering where the parents and teachers are, and why none of them apologized to the victim, and most of all why none of them apologized to their own children and students in that they had failed them as parents and teachers, and continue failing them by being silent.  

I was wondering where that American culture of honesty, openness, innocence, wholesomeness, kindness, vibrancy, helping others, courage, politeness, and respect to others, that I had absorbed from my friends had gone to?   What have we done to the future generations and the future of this country?

Written in Feb. 2011, completed in March, 2013