May Snow in Colorado

It is the first of May, and it is just barely snowing here in Loveland.  I actually hate when it snows in April, and loathe when in snows in May.  I was telling my coworker a couple weeks ago how I feel like grown-ups (yeah, I don't consider myself a grown-up, yet) are always talking about "getting moisture."  For instance, they will say, "It is very cloudy outside.  I wish it would just rain so we could get some moisture."  I do not want moisture.  I want the sun, and the heat.  I want summer.

Anyways, this post isn't going to be just about my hatred of getting moisture, and my hope that when I'm a grown-up, I'm not obsessing about it. (What tv show is it where one of the characters hates the word moisture?) The snow and winter always reminds me of hard seasons we may experience in life.  When I was 18, I got a tattoo of a Japanese character of folklore.  Her name is Yuki-Ona.  She is inhumanly beautiful, with translucent skin, and black hair.  She glides across the snow, leaving no footprints. In many stories, she reveals herself, and traps travelers, freezing them to death or turning them to ice.  She is winter personified.  The tattoo represents a winter in my life, and by that I mean a period of time in my life that was particularly difficult, a time that I did not want to forget and let happen again.

Lately, I have been dealing with something difficult.  I needed to let something go, and I needed to say goodbye. As I was driving home tonight, I passed Namaqua Park.  I love love love Namaqua Park.  My sisters and I would walk down there on summer days and play by the Big Thompson River, and on a couple occasions, if the water was calm, we swam in it.  I had my first kiss at Namaqua Park (well, it wasn't my first kiss, but it I like to pretend it was.)  I've been kicked out of it by cops before, but c'mon, really, Loveland, you close your parks at ten?  I've fed squirrels pancakes there, laughed, cried, fought and made up at Namaqua Park.

So, tonight I stopped at Namaqua Park to finally let go of this something.  It had just started to snow, and the grass was wet, and the dirt path down to the river had turned to mud.  The snow was making little ripples in the river, and it was beautiful even in its gloominess.  I felt like the weather was mimicking my feelings.  I was sad, so sad to say goodbye, but it is no longer winter, and I knew there was hope in the spring.  The trees had little leaves on them, and the grass was looking greener, and this snow wasn't going to hurt them, it was just going to make them stronger.  And even though my life has a little bit of snow falling on me, it will just make me stronger.

This is a picture of the evening May snow in Colorado.  It is such little, light flakes, almost rain, that you can't see it in the picture.  This is outside the window of my bedroom at my parents' house.