Storms, and Snowstorms
You know how when people are making noodles by hand, sometimes they’ll take the dough and stretch it out by the width of their wingspan? And then they just keep stretching it as long as possible, over and over?
Well, that’s how I would describe this week. It has been a long week.
Every day — Monday to Friday, has been filled with to-do’s, homework assignments, meetings, music practice, and of course, more to-do’s.
Every day — spent going from one thing to the next.
Every day — finding myself thinking about the next thing I needed to do while doing the thing I needed to do in that moment.
But the last day of the weekdays was different, because I was told that a snowstorm was coming to Seattle. That’s right- a snowstorm was kind enough to take a short stroll through Seattle because it thought we needed some snow to change up our rainy, moody, ambiance.
“Probably nothing,” I told myself. “The weather app always gets it wrong, anyway.” (You know it’s true.)
Not this time.
“The weather app says it’s snowing!” My sister told me. “Let’s go see!”
I took a slow, deep breath. I had just finished off the last of my to-do’s for the day: A 30 minute music practice session, which was proceeded by a 1.5 hour quiz that I took from 8:30pm to 10:00pm, which was proceeded by a Youth Group meeting that took place from 7:00pm — 8:30pm.
It had been a long day.
And now, it was snowing. According to the weather app, anyway.
I had that kind of feeling where I was so tired that I didn’t feel like I was present anymore — do you ever feel like that?
As non-present and tired as I was, we went to the window in her room. My sister’s room has a view out into the street, which makes for the best view for viewing snow because of the streetlights that illuminate the snowflakes. The best viewing experience comes from when the lights are off. That way, one can look out into the distance at the streetlights and see the familiar warm hue that they provide to any traveler that crosses their path. In this case, our travelers were the snowflakes that were making their way through Seattle.
My plan was to see the snow, and immediately call it a night.
As we drew back the curtains and put our arms on the windowsill so that we could rest our heads on our hands, we began our observation of this snowstorm.
“Looks like the weather app wasn’t kidding this time,” I thought to myself, as the high winds were making the snowflakes twirl and swirl around in the sky before they gently fell to the ground.
The light of the streetlights painted the snowflakes a warm amber color, which contrasted with the dulled purple sky of this passerby snowstorm.
Occasionally, we would see a car pass by- seemingly unafraid of these snowflake-visitors of ours.
“Why are people even driving right now?” I asked. “It’s like 11:00pm on a Friday night with a snowstorm outside!”
“Maybe they’re coming home from work”, my sister said calmly. “You know- if I had been assigned to a shift this week, I would have probably been coming home right now.”
I wasn’t really in the mood to argue. I wasn’t really mad, either- just too tired to respond with anything meaningful. We stayed there for a couple minutes in silence, watching the cars drive by through the falling snow before I let out my first yawn, and then another. I was ready to call it a night.
My sister and I usually play some sort of game when we stare out of that window. Sometimes we try to guess the next kind of car that will pass by, or maybe we take the time to dream about what we’ll do when we go to play in the snow.
But not tonight. I’m too tired.
Right before I was about to tell my sister that I was going to go to sleep, a thought entered my mind: “How often do you get to have moments like this?”
And in that moment, this non-present mind which I had been carrying with me the whole week now took on a reflective stance. I thought about how I had treated people around me during that week — providing short answers to questions that came my way so that I could go check off my next to-do on my list. I thought about how I absent-mindedly ate dinner, just so that I could satiate my hunger and go to my next meeting or work on my next assignment. I thought about the music practice sessions that my sister and I had that week, and how while having those sessions, I kept worrying about if I would get enough sleep that night and get to do everything I needed to do before my body’s need for sleep would take over. I thought about who I had been that week, and who I was becoming.
I thought about how I was about to throw this beautiful moment of peace, quiet, and potentially, fun, just so that I could go get some sleep and repeat the cycle of busyness which I had been in the whole week.
In that moment, staring out from this dark room into a snowstorm that rarely ever makes a visit into Seattle, in the quiet of my sister’s bedroom watching the amber-touched snow swirl and fall down from the purple hued sky, my non-present mind exited the room.
I took a deep breath.
“Do you think the next car is going to come from the top or the bottom of the street?” I asked.
End note: I realized upon reading through this story multiple times that it may make it seem like I do not enjoy all of the opportunities I have in my life to serve others and personally grow. That could not be further from the truth.
I want to make it clear that I believe that it is a blessing to serve, a blessing to give, and a blessing to grow.
Perhaps this story was written out of a life experience where it just seemed like I had too many good things going on. To use the example that kicks off the story- maybe I was just having too many good bowls of noodles, and I was a bit full.
