The Snowflakes Fall

The Snowflakes Fall

          Once upon a chilly day, there was born to the cold North Wind and his wife, Winter Rain, a little snowflake they named Tiara.  As soon as she was born she was sent earthward from her nursery five miles in the sky.

          All around her other baby snowflakes fell, laughing and racing each other in a mad dash for the ground.  Few of the snowflakes she met stayed by her for any length of time.  But one particularly bold flake, by the name of Pontitello, kept whirling back into her line of vision every twenty feet or so.

          By the time they were only four miles from their destination, they were full grown and had come to know each other quite well.  They were good friends and loved to come very close and let their father blow them about in a hectic dance of freedom and joy.  The same things made them laugh, and similar things made them wonder.

          But on one issue they could not agree.  Pontitello not only cherished the commonly held theory that there were no two snowflakes exactly alike, but firmly believed that this “fact” held some mysterious importance in the grand scheme of things.

          Tiara could not have agreed less.

          “How can that be proved?” she wondered aloud as Pontitello once more swung by at three and one quarter miles high.

          “Are you going to start all of that again?” he sighed, though he was determined to fall close to his friend regardless of her odd philosophies.

          “I mean,” she continued, barely noticing either his irritation or his faithfulness, “no instrument has ever been created that could catch every single snowflake that has ever been born and fallen to Earth.  How can such a statement be made? Who can take such a statement seriously?”

          On they spun, the sun glistening off of their beautiful, fragile formations in such an orchestra of beauty that the angels all smiled and paused in their tasks to watch. Just for a breath, of course.

         

          Pontitello and Tiara aged gracefully, bringing wise counsel and solid friendship to their whole community of flakes, even though they could never come to an agreement on the one topic of Snowflake Uniqueness.

          At two miles up Pontitello finally got up the nerve to ask Tiara if she would like to join him for the final plunge to Earth.

          “When we get to Earth and our Final Reward,” he wheedled. “I can think of no one I’d rather merge crystals with, Tiara.  Won’t you agree to spin with me into the presence of Old Man Winter, my lovely?”

          “O.K.” she replied with a chuckle and, after one final, solitary whirl – they united at their northern tips – and became one.

          One mile left to go:

Sigh – it has been such a thrilling fall.

          One thousand feet:

Isn’t life wonderful?

          Five hundred feet:

Are you ready?

          One hundred feet:

Quick – time for one last dance!

          Floop.

          Tiara/Pontitello landed and learned the truth.

          There were no two snowflakes born exactly alike!  Though based on faith rather than measurable data, it was nonetheless true.

          But in the end, there was so much more to that truth – just as Pontitello had suspected all along. For, though no two snowflakes were exactly alike, they were all One. A continuous white blanket – so impermanent in form, so eternally joined. 

          And the End turned out to be only the Beginning.  After all, Spring brings the Melt – which resurrects the flakes into a sheet of running water, rushing and gurgling toward the sea.  Summer finds them somewhere over the Equator …up and up they steam, back into the blue, singing sky until, once again, North Wind meets Winter Rain: and the beautiful children fall.