Snowflakes

We had a snow­storm this week.
It was our first big snow in sev­er­al years. But cli­mate change seems to be full of sur­pris­es. The snow cov­ered moun­tains are a beau­ti­ful sight, and it gives me chills to remem­ber that every sin­gle snowflake that fell dur­ing that storm was unique! Just like us, no two are ever the same!

I made paper snowflakes in grade school.
I nev­er knew what I’d see at the end. I’d fold up a piece of white paper and then cut bits and pieces out. It was like a mag­ic trick! I nev­er knew what my snowflake would look like til I unfold­ed the paper.

Every­one made a snowflake and every snowflake was dif­fer­ent, unique!
We taped them all to a string that went across the room so they could flut­ter above our heads, just like the real ones in a snowstorm.

“Unique” was a word grown-ups used to describe me.
It was not a com­pli­ment. Quite the oppo­site. They expect­ed the preacher’s daugh­ter to be a spot­less reflec­tion of her par­ents. I was sup­posed to have per­fect­ly fold­ed ankle socks and a soft voice. I had neither.

But I didn’t trust grown-ups a whole lot,
so, I didn’t wor­ry too much about being unique or dif­fer­ent. After all, most of the oth­er kids were pret­ty dif­fer­ent, too.

I didn’t wor­ry about our dif­fer­ences either. I thought they made life fun.
But when we hit puber­ty, it was dan­ger­ous to be dif­fer­ent. You could get beat up in the bath­room for it. Sud­den­ly, it was very impor­tant for all of us to be exact­ly the same.

Gone were the joys of fingerpaints,
those glo­ri­ous­ly greasy mix­tures that let our fin­gers slide across a wet piece of paper and make art for our par­ents to trea­sure. Gone were our 48 col­ors of crayons, and in came the col­ored pen­cils. Instead of art, we made math­e­mat­i­cal graphs. We all had to learn the same answer so we could pass the test.

My alge­bra teacher told me that math is the same as art,
but I nev­er believed her. I have yet to see a math graph dis­played on a liv­ing room wall.

It’s a chal­leng­ing time to be alive.
Maybe to sur­vive we’ll need fresh fin­ger­paint, few­er stan­dard­ized tests, and more nur­tur­ing of  our unique selves.

When the snow­storm came this week, I felt like a child again.
I twirled about with out­stretched arms and caught snowflakes on my tongue. And every sin­gle one was unique, just like you and me.