Snow. Snow is everywhere in the winter here in Michigan. It truly does feel like Christmastime. There is snow on almost every tree, and snow all over the ground… well besides on the street. The smell is so beautiful. The forests look awesome. Everything looks sweet. I can just feel that winter’s here. And it is.

—My younger self, sometime before fourth grade.

My little mind understood the beauty of the cold. The hexagonal shapes formed by hydrogen bonding floating softly to the ground despite their knowledge of the brevity of its life.

My little mind loved the world surrounding me. The simplicity. Everything about the winter wonderland.

The snow on the trunks and branches look like little nests waiting for a bird to land on it. The snow smells like fresh ice out of a freezer (even though the snow is the real fresh ice). Some things are so small but so beautiful, like the lichen and moss on the side of the tree and the snowflakes all around us.

—My fifth-grade self, January 16, 2015.

Where is the snow?

I remember the times when it came in the fall. The winter equinox was light-years away yet lightly or harshly it came tumbling in October, November, or December. Not just for two days like it did this year, it stayed longer.

The snow days came as I danced the “Snow Dance,” though I didn’t need to. The snow was already coming.

The snow is finally here, coming in swift flurries. The bittersweet air is brushing my cheeks, making them turn as red as roses. The intricate patterns of the snowflakes are landing anywhere they fly to.

—My sixth-grade self, December 18, 2015.

Maybe it’s not late. Maybe sitting inside wasting away my days staring at a computer has changed my sense of time. But I know it wasn’t always like this. I know the snow used to come earlier.

So what is it?

Is it global warming?

Am I just being a needy snow lover?

Is it the sickness in the world?

Is it just a different time every year so we never get attracted to schedules?

The sun peeking through the clouds and trees making the snow shiny and shimmery like diamonds or glass. Not just the pure snow glistens but also the tracks the animals left behind.

— My sixth-grade self, January 7, 2016.

I miss the days sitting in the cold taking in the world around me. I miss the days where I just sat outside and smelled the difference between fall and winter and spring.

I miss the natural sparkles everywhere I look.

I miss the quiet noise of the forests with the soft pattering of snow falling with Blue Jays and Chickadees in the distance.

I miss the blanket that lays over the world.

The snow can’t come soon enough.