There’s something enchanting about when it really snows in New York City. I’m talking Hallmark movie-grade, pure, idyllic snow. Until recently, it felt like a few years since I last experienced a snow like that in the city. I had been eagerly waiting for the next one to arrive, like a dog whose attention was fixed to the window, tail wagging at any sign their human companion would be coming home. And a few weeks ago, the skies finally availed, allowing me to bound outside and embrace the weather I long awaited.
A group of my friends and I decided to go sledding in Riverside Park – an extensive series of wide paths, sports fields, and green space on the west side of Manhattan that, germane to its name, runs alongside the Hudson River. We marched towards the park in our Michelin Man-esque smattering of double-masks and layered sweatpants and coats. My friend's little sister was in tow, who proudly donned a full winter get-up complete with snow pants, a hat, and even some reflective goggles.
The magic of a real snow in the city comes from the polarity, and our trek delivered. All at once, the streets felt muffled, as masses of cars paused their bumbling through the streets. Most of the vehicles left humming around were a sporadic mixing of persistent cabs, rumbling snow plows, and the occasional bundled-up delivery person still chiming away on their bicycle. Even while some snippets of the city quieted and much of the energy running through the city was channeled elsewhere, those who kept the city’s wheels turning discreetly pushed on.
While the streets were mostly bare – aside from blankets of snow, leopard-printed with the echoes of boot treads – the traffic coalesced on the sidewalks and intersections. Couples and families patiently navigated impromptu snowbanks while dogs both big and small directly pranced through them.
And so the lines between the muffled streets and the lively paths – and soon enough the park – were fluid, yet distinct, all through a matter of steps. The former was peacefully muted, the loudest consistent sound being the crunch of our steps on the packed snow. The latter was lively with the ambient amalgamation of relaxed chatter and excitable cheers; children and their parents, teenagers and college kids all hurling snow balls or sliding down the park’s hill, more or less gracefully. But the hushed cityscape, the controlled chaos along the sides of the streets, and the effervescent sledding hill all felt part of one moment, an ephemeral snow globe we were all encapsulated within.
Trudging back home, we paused at a quiet intersection to regroup. The city’s boundless light intermingled with the night sky and its falling flakes; street lamps shined just a few degrees brighter than usual, illuminating the still-steadily falling snowflakes and contrasting them further against the hazy nightscape. The specks of white all fell in their own way – some falling hard and fast, almost with purpose. Others fell lazily, as if simply going with the flow of their own gravity.
You’ve probably heard that adage about every snowflake being unique, and how we can see each other similarly: all special in our own way. But hearkening back to that moment – the street lamps making the sprinkling flakes glow even brighter against the night sky, the sensation of the snow when it finally brushed my face – I think of how even if each snowflake might physically manifest differently, they all leave you with the same feeling on your face. Crisply real. Soft and gentle. A smidgen of something both purely natural, yet plainly magical. After all, snow is just a product of the air around us. On the other hand, that something so marvelous, so sublime, can simply materialize out of thin air feels pretty special.
I’ve been thinking about love. About how much we crave it, and conversely the lengths we walk – in one way or another – to fear some part of it. It’s a little silly, isn’t it? Wholehearted love is something we zestfully seek out, yet hastily shy away from as we approach it, lest we get too close. Giving yourself permission to fully embrace love is challenging. Doing so asks for both the comfort to choose love, even in spite of the possibility of it not being reciprocated, and the internal belief that you deserve love in the first place – not just from others, but from yourself.
The saying goes you can’t really love others until you love yourself first. But maybe sometimes you can’t love yourself until you allow yourself to genuinely see love from and within others. To identify and explore what it means to love – observing who may be sending you love; wondering how people around you express love to each other; acknowledging that maybe you actually deserve what you’re seeing, too.
Love, in how people manifest it, is naturally often different. People express and receive love in their own unique ways. But love, in how people feel it, is made up of through lines. Sure, we all view and sense love through our own lenses and life experiences, but there’s a presence love surrounds us with that’s almost unmistakable, even if we may not have an all-encompassing set of words to describe it. And maybe we only truly feel that presence every now and again. But there’s something there that feels common between how you and I experience love.
Encountering the presence makes you feel as if it’s the first time you’re really noticing something. Time slows and the mind eases when you happen upon an illumination of something you’ve always known, but not often appreciated. Speckles of love in the air around – whether spreading hard and fast, or flowing slowly – feel intimately clarified.
Perhaps you feel this presence when you reunite with someone you’ll always feel close with, even if you spend more time with them in daydreams than days, due to distance or time. Maybe when a name shows up on your phone screen, at a time you inadvertently hoped to see the shape of its letters adorn your screen. At daybreak in the morning, as your lover lies peacefully at your side, in all their stillness and all their complexities. At sundown, while you stroll alongside someone you may not have even guessed you would designate as “friend” some time ago. The experience almost beckons you to count all the serendipitous events it took for you to be along someone’s side at all. Sometimes you feel it at the most random times, with no warning. And sometimes it doesn’t even feel like a presence for you – it's simply a display of love between others you witness in passing, a blip in time that reminds you that something so ethereal exists at all.
Standing at the quiet intersection – as light posts flooded the scape and blurred a gradient between the pure white street, the placid night sky, and the descending crystals in between – I felt the flakes calmly settle on my face. I looked around and saw them falling on my friends, too. Sticking to the tops of their hats, gently sitting atop their hair, or landing softly onto their cheeks. What wonder to – in what felt like the first time – see and feel something so pure that seemingly came out of nowhere. And to appreciate the recognition that I could – and was – sharing that moment too.
Now it’s the wake of Valentine’s Day. A holiday that can be sweet, saccharine, or just sad. And in a moment like today – as we reel from so much collective distance and loss – those typical features of the holiday feel augmented. It’s important to sit with that for a moment: how much love may feel yearned for, and how much love may feel lost. How many messages are left unsent, out of fear that one’s expression of compassion will be left unrequited; how many gestures of love withheld, even while love feels so urgently needed. Moreover: how many “I love you” texts that may be one’s last message sent; how many “I miss you” texts periodically sent to a number whose owner can’t answer.
There are already an array of uncertainties imbued within love – of attaining it, maintaining it, or even feeling like you deserve it. And the way we feel and understand love – in all of its manifestations – has only been tested further lately. It’s worth considering, then, what this time can signify beyond just another February 14th celebration.
Of course, there’s no coherent reason why we celebrate Valentine’s Day the way we do, on an arbitrary day in February. We could simply embed a new purpose to it. Maybe we can think of this as a moment to explore what it means to wholeheartedly love – where it comes from, how we express it, what suppresses it – and acknowledge that we all deserve it. If our relationship with love can undergo so much strain in such a short period of time, we can try now to enliven and intensify it, too.
That idyllic, wintry day was a treat. But I’ll always come back to that delicate pause at the snowy and lamp-lit intersection. That dreamlike moment, when time slowed and just for a second everything else faded. The only thing that seemed to matter was the speckles filling the air around. A reminder of a presence, a feeling that you and I deserve to be a part of.
How necessary it is and will be for us to celebrate all the kinds of love that surround us – not just the kind that looks a certain way. After all, even if it manifests differently, love still evokes a few particular sensations that feel common. A sense of gentleness. A smidgen of something both purely natural, yet plainly magical. And yeah, maybe it is all just a product of the air around us.
But that something so marvelous, so sublime, could simply materialize out of thin air really does feel special.
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