The warmth of the mug of hot tea nestled in her hands was a stark contrast to the cold radiating from the window she stood in front of. The busy city streets before were a blur of headlights and taillights, the lights hazy behind the snow flurries that fell calmly. In the distance she could still make out a few lights on in the tall buildings, other apartments or offices with people still awake at the late hour just as she was. A sip of tea to warm her insides did nothing to calm her racing mind.
She really could not complain. Things were going great for her. Her son lay asleep just down the hall, the apple of her eye. She was in good health. She had recently lost over 200 pounds since she dropped her ex-husband in their divorce. Things were looking up finally. Yet, something was missing. There was a part of her that felt empty.
Another sip from the mug as she continued to watch the snow fall outside. It was coming down harder now, dusting the busy city in a light blanket that would only grow in thickness as the night wore on. It wasn't the first time they had seen snow that year, yet it was the first time that it had fallen heavily, enough to stick and be left behind when the morning would come.
Her mind wandered back to a time when she was younger, far younger than she was now, back when she would wish for snow every year. It did not have to be a lot. It didn't even have to stick. Just enough for her to see it through her bedroom window and for her to hurriedly try to pull on her jacket and shoes to go out and play in it before her mother would call for her to get back in the house before she caught a cold. Just enough for her to catch a single snowflake on her tongue.
She had been a young teenager in high school the first time she remembered it snowing. Sitting on her cedar chest in front of the bedroom window with her face pressed against the cold glass, her warm breath fogged up the surface. The flurries were illuminated by the street light standing on the sidewalk just past the edge of the yard. The clock on her nightstand read just past three in the morning and she knew she should've been sleeping but it was snowing!
Brown eyes closed not long after that only to pop open a few hours later. Running back to the window, she pressed her face against the cold glass once more and grinned as she saw the blanket of white covering the yard. It was a race against herself to see how fast she could put on her winter clothing and get downstairs and out into the front yard. It was cold. Gods, it was so cold but she just didn't care.
That had been the day she had built her first snowman. It wasn't very big, standing just barely over three feet tall. Her fingers had tingled and her toes had gone numb by the time she made it back inside the house, her mother quickly coming up behind her to usher her towards the bathroom and into a lukewarm shower. She ended up with a runny nose for three days after that but it had been worth it.
Since then she had seen snow sparingly in her youth. It wasn't until she had moved up north to New York that it had become a regular occurrence during the winter months. In fact, it had been odd adjusting to the weather up north. There were actual seasons, all four of them. Back home in Louisiana there had just been summer, hurricane, and a week and a few days of winter sprinkled sporadically between December and February.
The low tapping noise of tiny ice pellets hitting the window drew her back into the now. One last sip from her mug had her grimacing at the cooled off tea. She moved away from the window to rinse the mug in the kitchen sink before moving towards the back of the apartment towards her bedroom.
As she climbed into bed, her mind wandered once more. It had been years since she had been back in her home state. She had moved away just after high school to attend school out of state. A quick shotgun wedding to her high school sweetheart and the two of them had packed up the car and they hadn't looked back. And with her parents having moved to the west coast not long after there, well there hadn't been any reason to go back to that small town. But maybe it was time.
Maybe the part of her that had been missing was the part of her heritage that she had been denying herself for thirteen years now. The part of herself that she had left behind when she had looked up into that rear view mirror all those years ago. Yeah, that's exactly what it was.
She went to bed with a smile on her face, her mind made up before her eyes had closed. Tomorrow she would pack her and her son's bags and they would make a road trip for the holidays. It was time her son knew where his mother had been raised. It was time to go back and visit that sweet little town in southern Louisiana.