When It Snows

 2020  2  15    

When It Snows

White snow is falling outside the window.

I feel like it doesn’t snow as much as it did when I was young in Seoul now, so I feel glad to see the white snow in a long time.

After I graduated from Syracuse graduate school at New York State, I lived in Oswego which was 50 minutes away in the north. My husband I had studied with at graduate school taught Economics at SUNY Oswego. Right in front of the campus of the university which was one of the five New York universities that the Rockefellers founded, was the huge Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes of North America. My son Andrew was born in front of the lake, larger than the sea, on a day with blue sky and red autumn colors.

In summer, apart from that lake, there were a lot of Emerald lakes, waterfalls and rivers nearby.

But it was near Canada, and it started snowing in October and kept snowing even in the early May.

Snow fell on the numerous tall trees, and I thought they made the most beautiful Christmas cards.

Trees standing in the yard of Oswego house

 You had to shovel the snow that piled like mountains every day to get out from your driveway. Every house had a car designated for winter, since deicer made your car rusty. My cheeks ached with cold, and winter was very long. In Washington D.C. where I went to graduate school, I could feel the air of spring in February, but come home, it was still cold in May.

Johnny Carson used to open the show with world news in a popular midnight talk show named “Tonight Show”, and he once said: “Oswego, New York broke its record again and snowed a lot today. Oswego is the snow capital of the world.” I lived there.

My father came to Oswego from Seoul and was engrossed in memories, comparing Oswego to Manchuria where he used to go to university. People who briefly stayed before going to Niagara Falls, admired the snow, but residents of Oswego looked at the sky with the hope of snow letting down – there were times when it felt like spring would never come.

I thought I had forgotten all about it. But the sight of a snowed mountain reminded me of Oswego house, which had a tree house on the tall tree in the backyard which leads to a deep forest, and the cathedral with beautiful stained glasses at the entrance of Mineto Rd – seeing how they come to me like a dream, I guess these pictures are linked with snow  in my mind.

Tree house on the tall tree in the backyard. The backyard behind leads to endless forest. My mother, coming from Seoul, translated this scene into poem which got her a gold prize in Japan.

Photo by Hoyon Son

Winter in Seoul, though not comparable to that in Oswego, is still long. A person like me gets cold easily and wants to escape to somewhere warmer – after passing a few months due to this and that, I finally come to welcome Spring.

But if snow comes from now and then like this, it is a very good thing. It’s the flower of winter. Snow covers the city that humans messed up in white. Inwangsan Skirt Rock behind my home, and the triangular Bugaksan behind the Blue House is piled with snow. it is dazzling that snow gives them a fresh look. My mind lightens up and hopes rise for a new day.

And it would be the same with life.

If every day and every moment was abundant, full of joy, pleasure and good things, how would you be able to feel happy and grateful? Just like you feel fluttered at a rare rainbow, and your first time ever total eclipse of the moon feels marvelous to you, in our life, we get to expect and hope because there are unexpected pleasant surprises and happiness.

I miss those days when I used to climb Bukhansan, Inwangsan with clean pine trees.

  The morning of Skirt Rock in Inwangsan, February 9, 2014 

Bugaksan standing between the safe house on the left and the Blue House.  

Bugaksan, behind the Blue House, in the snowing morning