What I Learn in a Snowstorm
by Sara Flitner
“Good snowflakes: they don’t fall anywhere else.” Layman Pang
When I first moved to Jackson, I walked into Jedediah’s Original House of Sourdough, and proprietor Mike Gierau hired me on the spot. My fellow waitresses and cooks had a favorite watering hole, the Log Cabin Saloon, and we gathered there for happy hour too many days of the week for me to confess.
Most of the regulars were older than me, but they were a welcoming bunch and one of my fast favorites was a man called “Hippy Jeff” because he had a long ponytail and played tennis in shorts only, much to the delight of spectators. His trade was making the most scrumptious desserts – his lemon raspberry cake will be my last meal – and they were served in all the best restaurants in town. He worked all night, slept, and got up in time for a game of tennis or ping pong before showing up to hear the news of the day.
Jeff baked my wedding cake, which Mike transported – a precarious challenge for which he still holds a grudge. The cake was served as the setting sun lit up the Big Horn mountains behind the Shell Community Hall, the red rocks ablaze. The dance floor was a teeming mass of smiling faces, flying hair, including Hippy Jeff’s. I can taste that cake, even now, and name the faces, a constellation of close friends, family, college roommates, six-week-old baby Hardie being swayed in the arms of a senator’s wife.
Jeff and I saw each other frequently for many years, and then, as often happens, our lives went different directions. I started a business and then a family and began speaking the previously foreign language of recitals, piano lessons, ski school, and basketball. Jeff continued to make desserts, expanded his outlets, and started selling slices of his concoctions to lucky tourists.
I ran into Jeff a couple of months back, in the post office, his hair now shorter, but the same smile and warm hug. We promised to get together for a cup of coffee or a Budweiser in honor of our Log Cabin days, but neither of us got around to it.
I got a text over the weekend telling me that Jeff had died. He was found in his own bed, looking like he was sleeping peacefully, and I like to imagine, with a small smile.
The night after Jeff passed, the snow coming down was soft, just enough cold in the air to keep the flakes light and distinct. The sky was filled with them, too many to ponder. Only the flakes that fell upon my sleeve were visible individually; the rest were part of a bigger cycle, blotting out the barely waning moon in this vast natural snow globe. I watched the snowflakes for a good long while, looking as high into the sky as I could see, wondering what it would be like to see a snowflake the moment it formed, then witnessing the fullness of its journey to where it would rest on the ground, part of a snowfield, at least until spring thaw.
As we fall in a heap at the threshold of another holiday and another year, the snowstorm and thoughts of my friend Jeff give me a beautiful pause. When the sky fills with more snowflakes than I can imagine, I get the same feeling I get as I try to remember the people who have drifted into and out of my life, others who made an impact because of the particular shape or texture of their talents, those who pass by me on the street without so much as a word passing between us. Even in the briefest encounters, I try to pay attention to the fact that we are all part of something much bigger and longer-lasting than our own short lives, but there is also within each of us a recipe that is our very own.
This is not a sad story. We are not meant to hang in the sky. We form, we are blown around a bit, and we make our way to earth, no different than the snowflakes. It is a comfort; to know I’m no big deal, just one face among countless numbers of those who came before and will come after. It is also awe-inspiring that I can care so much about the people I love, the community I call home, the mountains that dot my periphery, my life.
May you feel the outrageous gift we have, the impossible one that is simply being here, together, part of the same storm cycles, breathing the same air, sharing roads and worries and hopes. May you stay fully present to the countless snowflakes and humans who offer us gifts that can only be unwrapped if we pause long enough to see.
They don’t fall anywhere else.
Happy holidays and thanks for engaging with us, reading our Friday missives, supporting our work. (Year-end matching funds drive – every gift, any size, counts. Help if you love anything about BJW!)
Peace,
Sara
