Waiting
/The Boston Herald
In Whistler, British Columbia, where snow is why people come and skiing is what people do, there is no snow. There is only rain and more rain. Day after day of it.
It will snow soon, people say, looking up at a thick, gray sky that is more November than December. There is no bite in the air, only a chill. There are no rosy red cheeks and white frosty breaths. Only cinched hoods and conversations that you can’t see.
There are trees and mountains everywhere you look here. There is the smell of wood-smoke mixed with the scent of pine. There are long, winding trails and lighted slopes and snow machines making and blowing soft, white powder onto hard, brown earth. And there are skiers, too, lots of them, wading through puddles, slogging through mud, sitting on soaking wet chair lifts to get above the clouds to where the only real snow and good skiing is.
“Any day now,” people in the village below say, shopkeepers with their eyes on the sky, who have jackets and hats and hot chocolate to sell. “Any day now,” visitors eager for what they’ve been promised hear. But the next day dawns and it is more of the same, no waking to the crunch of tires on newly fallen snow, just the familiar whoosh of rubber on wet pavement, and another gray day.
In the midst of this waiting, in a room that serves as a church in the middle of the village, a preacher talks to a small congregation about the coming of Christ and Christmas. He gathers the children around him and asks, “How do you know that Christmas is near?”
“Because we have a tree,” one boy says.
“Because my mother’s wrapped all the presents,” pipes up another.
“Because of the Advent candles that we light here every week,” answers an older, clearly attentive, girl.
“And how many candles do we light this week?” the preacher asks and the children, in unison, shout out “Two!” Except for one small boy who raises his hand and answers, “Three!”
“No,” the preacher says. “Remember? We lit the first candle last week and today will be the second and next week will be three and then, just a few days before Christmas, we’ll light the last one.”
The boy looks crestfallen. Time did this. It tricked him. Time does this to all children in December. The younger the child, the longer a December day.
Time does this to adults, too. It pokes along for anyone who is waiting for something, whether it’s snow or Christmas or a child to come home from college or a child to be born.
In Whistler, the snow finally made an appearance last Wednesday. It began and ended as rain but for a few hours in the middle, it was the real thing.
“Look at that,” a waitress said, coffeepot in hand, pausing in her routine to walk over to a window and gaze out. A clerk in the middle of explaining a cleansing cream to a customer, noticing that the rain had turn to snow, smiled and said, “Well, finally.” People who had been inside rushed outside and instead of walking with their heads down to keep dry, they now walked with their heads up.
It wasn’t the best snow. It was heavy and slushy. But it stuck on car roofs and on the thick green branches of all the lighted trees and on the narrow roadways and on the eyelashes of people whose breath and conversation you could now see.
“You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout I’m telling you why,” a child no older than four sang as she walked along.
Had it been snowing every day for a month, this thick wet stuff wouldn’t have been noticed. But here it was, finally, not nearly what it should have been, miles from perfect, but wonderful, somehow.
Now here comes Christmas. And though it may not be what it should be, though it may not be exactly all we want, isn’t it always wonderful, too?
Anticipation is a prelude to joy, a sweet, steady song that is playing now. As children we hear it. But then we grow up and grow deaf to it because we’re in a hurry for the real song to begin.
But anticipation is real, too. It’s the music that sets the stage, that makes a heart waiting for something beat a little faster and that, magically, amazingly, forces time to slows down.
