Snow Angels

It doesn’t snow back home.

Looking out at the window from my small apartment, with nothing but thick clothes and a choice to make, I see that it snows. I’ve been in the city long enough to know the odds living in the outskirts, but apparently not long enough to get used to the sadness when you’re alone. The chill in the apartment is a lot crisper than it’s supposed to be, and I reckon it’s the broken heater that my landlord doesn’t seem to consider a problem, no matter how many times I’ve asked. It’s partly why I drown myself with coffee.

Growing up in a tropical country, I’ve always dreamt of this. Living in the States where it snows, moving to get a better life, and maybe making snow angels. I used to think of snow as cotton candy, so white and pretty and light, but now all I know of it is that it’s gray and sad and frozen. For one, I can’t work properly, my brain constantly freezing along with my face and hands. To add to that, the mile walk to the subway becomes twice farther. Finally, I learned that snow angels are a bunch of bullshit, because they don’t even form properly in here. Not that I’ve tried.

It’s the first week of January, and I’ve had two New Years—two snowy winters away from home. But I’m alone.

I pick up my half-filled mug from the chipped window sill and down it as fast as I could, not taking my eyes away from the gloom of the morning. Every time I find myself doing this, it’s as if the snow falls for me, in a rush, all at once.

I have to get to work. And my shoulders feel a little heavier.

Without a last glance, knowing I get to live this dream again in the next morning, I take hurried steps out the door, locking up with both ease and indifference. It’s not like I’ve got anything any of my rowdy neighbors can take anyway. Prepared for the cold, I walk out the front door of the complex, I fail to decide whether it snowed a lot harder today, or it’s just all the build up from the rest of the past season. Who cares, anyway? My boots take a step and their work. The sun is barely up, and I can’t wait for it to come down again, the same way I can’t wait to go back home, or to the apartment...whatever it is.

It’s the first week of January, and I’ve had two snowy winters away from home. But I still fail to remember that this is something I’ve dreamt of.

A true New Yorker would laugh at me. I know because they had. The choice between keeping a job you don’t like for the sake of feeding yourself and supporting your family from about five worlds away and applying for a low-paying one to try to find your passion, like snow angels, is a bunch of bullshit.

“Of course you pick the former. Passion is not for everyone. That’s just how it is. At least you got some food keeping you warm, huh?” the bartender from the diner told me a few nights ago. At that point I thought about the breakfast bagel I had that morning. Those five dollars equate to three meals for my whole family. The thought made me dizzy, even more than how my beer could get me. “And looking at you…you’re already lucky you’re here, honey.”

These thoughts are always my company in my one-mile walk to the subway everyday. Like I said, the snow doubles it somehow, but I don’t mind. I’m lucky I have company. I’m lucky I’m here. My family sacrificed a lot for me to be here.

I’m lucky I get to live this dream.

For some weird reason, laughter covers my ears in the middle of the freezing cold. I almost smile until I realize that’s not normal. I look to the other side of the street to know it’s these two teenage kids, running after each other in the ungodly hours of a winter morning, being a nuisance to a lot of angry people on the way. Ironically, both are odd and normal at the same time. The laughter is odd, but the anger is normal. People are always so angry in here.

I continue to walk. The snow doesn’t stop, as for the past two winters.

I got a call this morning. About the low-paying job. The job that I liked. The job that I’d wanted to do, either here or back home. However, it included convincing my manager to release me today for the formality interview tomorrow.

My boots leave their footprints on the snow. I know I have to continue leaving more. I continue towards the right subway.

This is my dream.

It’s like it’s myself I have to convince more nowadays.

I see the familiar smoke down the alley, near the breakfast and newspaper stand I get my bagels from. These underdogs are so confident they hide their spot from the world, people just started getting used to it. I did. It’s my favorite thing in the city, I realize, because at least it doesn’t pretend to be something else. It’s just them downright doing their thing, in winter and in any other season.

It’s these thoughts that make me wonder why I dreamed of snow so much—why I dreamed way too much. It led me right where I wanted to go, but not quite. Then I decide it’s because passion isn’t for everyone, I have a stomach to keep warm, and a sacrificing family to support in return. I’m lucky to be here.

I get closer to it. The subway. Within my lifeless face I inwardly beg for a little energy to smile. The snow has to make up for it. Maybe not the snow angels, but at least I have the snow.

It doesn’t snow back home.

My hand finds its way to my coat pocket, where my phone is. I pull up my call history, and under my thick gloves, my fingers shake.

It’s the first week of January, and it snows hard.

“Good morning.” I look up to the sign in the entry, just to make sure it’s the right way. Just in case. I see that the stairs are still frozen. “Yeah, I’m sorry, she wouldn’t let me go.” I walk down on it.

My boots hit the last platform, gray and sad and frozen. I almost turn away.

It feels a lot colder today, but I decide it’s just because I hadn’t drunk enough coffee.