Faded | Forgotten

Riding in the backseat of my parents' car, I used to lean my body to the right to watch the snow come against the front windshield, imagining myself traveling through space at warp speed. At home, I would flip on the light to the back porch and peer through the blinds, stay a few minutes, then flip the lights back off to go about my business before eagerly returning in hopes that the sky hadn't yet given up. So long as the sky persevered so did I, completely captured by its extraordinary charm.

Fast forward fifteen years, I remember these things as I drive down the highway through Winter’s first snowfall, so concerned with everything else to enjoy a beauty that once enthralled me.

When did my sensitivity perish? For what purpose and at what expense? I scarf down my favorite food; sob into my softest blanket; push past the smell of fresh flowers; tune out the sound of waking birds; and drive through the snow without a second look. Beauty has become invisible, but it wasn't what changed.

"I hope I never get tired of watching snow fall." I wrote that years ago, before having lived in a place where snow is more common than sunshine. But I remember it now as the wish of someone who somehow knew before experience, it is not the beauty that fades but the beholder that forgets.

What beautiful things have we dismissed? What parts of us have we left behind? Is it worth the loss? I gather not. Come, behold with me. And remember yourself in the process.