La neige

Although I am suffering from sickness and foggy head, in part because of the cold my thin lizardish Arizona blood was just not designed to take...

I can't believe. It is snowing. In Paris.

Having spent my childhood and adolescence in the Southwest and my young adulthood in California, I find snow startling. Like those falling leaves, snow was something that happened to storybook children. I remember one book in particular, beautifully illustrated in watercolor, in which a child made snow angels in a virgin blanket of snow imbued with every color imaginable. That's what I want, I thought. I want a December like that.

A week ago, I stopped on a whim at the patisserie just before the steps of Cardinal Lemoine, the Métro stop closest to school, and bought myself a wedge of pastry with custard filling. On the surface of the pastry was a thin layer of coarse, matte, opaque sugar, grains as big as peppercorns, so light a breath could scatter them. The pastry was divine, but the sugar was my favorite part. Paying no attention to the judgmental French people on the platform as I waited for my train, I licked my finger, picked up a few grains, and dissolved them one by one on my tongue.

Lo and behold, when I emerged from Convention, my stop, I found soft little grains falling from the sky. No, I thought. This is impossible.

But yes: snow the exact color and texture of my sugar was beginning to freckle my black wool coat. Granules that resisted my warmth and perched on my hands and scarf, allowing me to dart out my tongue furtively and feel them crumble, cool, in my mouth.

Today it snowed again. I could see it falling in the courtyard. When we were released from class, as Emily and I trudged back, well-wrapped, to Cardinal Lemoine, I made her stop and look up. An eddy of weightless snowflakes circled a yellow streetlight, little live insects of precipitation. She seemed amused at my enchantment. After all, she's lived in several places where it snows--a lot. To her, snow is ordinary.

And after all, it wasn't very much snow. The only surfaces where it gathered unmelted were the windshields of cars and a few untrodden corners of sidewalks.

But on my way back from choir tonight, the French girl who also takes line 12 and with whom I chat on the commute told me that I was witnessing something very special. Snow here, she tells me, is a very rare occurrence.

Perhaps my wonder is not so extraordinary.

My delectable capons, I know I am supposed to be writing about Paris. I've included the names of my Métro stops in order to lend the post a Parisian flavor. But in the end, I just longed to share my desert native's enchantment with Magic Sky Sugar.