December 8, 2008

Grown up.

Outside my window, snowflakes tiptoe across gusts of wind before parachuting to the ground.

Fifteen stories below my window, a young boy reaches down to pick up a handful of greyish-white powder off the ground and comes up with a mitten-full of densely-packed snow. He cups his other mitten over the pile in his hand in an attempt to form a vaguely-spherical snowball ready to be thrown at the young girl in front of him.

The young boy fixes his gaze at the back of the young girl’s head, running his eyes across the ridges at the bottom of her bright yellow toque, trying to find the perfect target for his snowball. Less than a second later, he raises his mitten, squints his eyes to focus in on his prey, and cocks back his elbow to get the necessary torque for his throw.

He pauses.

The young boy, as if suddenly possessed, drops his arm to his side, cups the snowball with both his mittenned-hands, and runs up to the young girl in the bright yellow toque and hands her the snowball. A gift. Not a weapon, or instrument of pain or humiliation, but instead a physical manifestation of the fact that he was thinking of her.

She smiles.

Fifteen stories above, at my window, I smile too. Because I remember that I was that boy once, and that even though I’m behind my window and not packing a snowball in my mittens to give to you as a gift, I’m still thinking of you.