Flowers are famously ephemeral. So is snow.

The recent days have been a wonderland of snowy experience. Last night, walking Ivy down the road with towering overhead snow banks, I felt like I was in a dream. There is magic in a snowy landscape, when the hush blankets everything, the white reflects the lights. In those moments, by seeming miracle, peace reigns.

This morning I woke to find that the rain is here. Everything is dripping. When I go outside I’ll see that yesterday’s soft fluffiness is today’s concrete. Out my bedroom window, I see the former snow pillows on my deck sagging with the weight of fallen water.

Living oceanside, as we do, means we are always swinging back and forth over the line of 32°. Because the climate is changing, the swing back to rain takes on an emotional tenor. I’d love so much to dwell in the snow all winter long. The longing is visceral. I also know I’ll not achieve that again in my lifetime.

Did I ever? It’s hard to recall childhood. The most certain marker of that in my memory is the Mendenhall Glacier. When it was a giant wall of ice that could fill the entirety of my view, things must have been colder. Winter must have persisted longer.

Were we weary then, with all the shoveling? Could we imagine how much we might miss it, might long for it?

This week I’ve been journaling in the mornings, trying to chase around the longing that I feel. I’m scribbling words over pages. In doing so I’m revealing to myself that the answer I seek does not reply to a specific question. It’s not What better books should I be reading? or Is there enough poetry in my life? It’s not Can I work out four times a week consistently? Five? Can I make it to just one? It’s not Should I be in the upstairs bedroom or down? or How would it be if I had soft lights in the living room corner? It’s also not Could I write with a comedic voice? or Were my past unhealthy relationships a result of my mother’s emotional absence in my pre-teen years? It’s not Will I be a more insightful person if my next audiobook is Braiding Sweetgrass rather than the second book of The Thursday Murder Club? How about Would joining a bean club help me eat more beans? The answer is to none of those questions, nor the thousands more than charge through my head each day.

The answer is somewhere else. Perhaps in the cold echo of footsteps on the stones of a cathedral. Perhaps it’s in warm socks.

My suspicion, as I enter this year, is that it’s in quieting and calming. In letting go. Letting go of agency, of potential, probably also of anger. I think it’s about contracting — not drawing back, not a retreat, but rather a loosening and a lessening.

Like an exhale. Or rain on snow.