As though awakening from a dream, perhaps midway upon its voyage from one extremity of consciousness to another—embedded within the slow-flowering realisation that I am dreaming—I find myself staring; vacantly, at the blank screen on my desk. I find its whiteness particularly jarring; yet it keeps me attentive to its various flickers and movements. It is strangely attractive; holding me in a dance of digital hypnosis. It is almost like the glamour of snow; those crystals of white which are equally blank but in their seeming blankness, house the gentle imprint of childhood; and the spell of snow. And all of a sudden, I am in a familiar neighbourhood again; collecting fragments of images together—pieces already there but now jumbled across the arc of time—to formulate what is to become an exercise in recollection.
It was from a window; overlooking a short stretch of newly-paved asphalt. I was walking towards a waiting bus. The school bus. My mother and brother were beside me, or behind me, and on our right were the columns of glued-together apartments we had just departed; their interiors collectively bulging and bustling with the busyness of a workday morning. The home we had just left was small and temporary; redolent with the aroma of warm olive oil. The liquid of that oil, like golden nectar, is equally blank, yet, houses a now-unattainable memory that desires to fuse with that of the snow. This morning, I smelled of that oil; its fragrance kept insulated under the many layers of clothing shielding me from what was late autumn. To my left, was a small garden. Its green lay hidden; slowly suffocating under the weight of a discarded assemblage of auburn beech leaves. We were going to school. Perhaps it was our first day. I was quietly frantic; with a nervousness that made the stomach feel as though it were floating; or as though the immemorial idiom of ‘butterflies’ were not quite a colourful array of Lepidoptera; but more like the residue of autumn; of dead and detached leaves abscised from their supportive branches; flying chaotically with the inopportune gusts of fear and apprehension.
The air was cool and crisp but the sky was overcast with a dim grey that looked like my brother’s jacket. The bus was waiting. The rising sun illuminated the sleepy silhouettes of a handful of other children; perhaps equally expectant; wondering as to the reason behind this detour to their otherwise standard route of progress towards school. I heard the faint thump of a distant bass drum. The radio was on. The crunch of gravel beneath my shoes grew louder. I was walking faster, hungry to know who awaited us. The outsoles of my shoes greedily devoured the road. We were the only ones walking, it seemed, and despite the clang of mugs and plates, or the intermittent gurgle of the bathroom flush from an adjacent room; it was silent, like the quiet before rainfall. As I approached the bus, the shadow occupying the driver’s seat soon revealed an expression of sternness.
A lady in a tight-fitting black sweater looked at me as I waited for the door to open. She hazarded a smile. Two steps lifted me up and led me inside; to the embrace of the bus’s cosy warmth. The lady wore bright, shining, golden earrings; shaped like cubed apples. A similarly large golden ring; rectangular like a block of ice—glowing against the leather-grey of the steering wheel—adorned her pudgy fingers and matched the sunshine of her hair. I then remember looking at my shoes, neatly polished and brand new. I felt shy and timid to look up. Unsure about where to sit, I ventured towards the middle of the bus—three strides forward—and sat by the window.
My mother and brother, arm in arm, were still walking. My mother looked up; her expression an exclamation of surprise. My brother too, turned skyward, and they both then stuck their hands out, in expectation, as though seeking to catch something. It was starting to snow. It looked like flecks of the most delicate marble; droplets that could be individually deciphered unlike the blur of rain. They fell as though lugubriously; lumbering to the ground with a similar apprehension of newness; diffident at colliding with the newly-constructed road. It was like a slow sprinkling of an unfamiliar powder, or as though a cloud were being grated; and each piece fell, downcast with the desolation of separation; like the leaves in the garden.
The bus doors opened once again and my brother climbed inside. My mother had packed us lunch, cooked in olive oil. Enclosed with the warmth of the kitchen, I kept the box between my legs in an effort to accentuate the heat inside the bus. There was girl who sat in front of me; whose hair fell like an avalanche upon slender shoulders covered by a scarf of white summer. My mother stood by the road, waving. My brother waved back, but I was too embarrassed to, wondering if the others on the bus were watching me. I looked at the falling snow upon my mother’s head. Each flake rested to form what together looked like a crown of stars.
The bus started to move. Still waving, my mother began to recede; till she too, in her red jacket, looked like a stray, solitary beech leaf.
