(sxc.hu)

Remembering a Time of Day by MEGAN MURPHY

Through a mix of nature observation and personal experience, this story explores how winter reflected -- and affected -- an episode of young romance.

Twilight -- the time of day where everything slows down. The air is thick with vapors and gasses, with a little bit of breath mixed in. Summer days and winter nights are long in a small town, especially my small town. Children run around in their friends' backyards, wiggling their piggy toes in between the blades of emerald grass sprouting from the dark earth. Winter brings wet snow pants and runny noses, children dancing around in the snow until their toes are numb. Mothers' worried voices can be heard by everyone, leaping over buildings and rustling through the thunderous trees looming above, until they reach the ears of their young, calling them home for dinner. As I sit on my deck facing my backyard, legs hanging off of the chipped railing, I find myself still wishing I was being called home for dinner by my nervous mother.

When we are children we have no worries or troubled thoughts. Relationships last only until the giant sun goes down, and then all is forgiven, and forgotten. As we get older, those relationships seem to take on more meaning, and the "forgive and forget" rule doesn't apply anymore. Twilight brings back the memory of my short relationship with the boy down the street. The slow, fading sun slips into my mind and takes over, seeping into my eyes and wrapping around my brain until it squeezes out the memories. The rays lift the memory out and play it like a movie against the backdrop of the thick trees. I try not to watch, but I'm mesmerized. It seems that nature has it out for me.

The movie scene takes me back to my freshman year of high school, a time when young love is almost inevitable. Winter had taken over the town, smothering any sign of green life with its chokehold. The trees were weighted heavily with pounds of white powder, and my fifteen-year-old heart was weighted down with love. When my deep purple alarm clock would go off at 7:30 A.M., I would crawl out of bed and throw on whatever clothes happened to be on my floor, and rush to the bus. My heart would pound heavily in anticipation of seeing my then-boyfriend, who lived two houses down from me. A smile would creep over my pale face as I brushed my teeth in the bathroom mirror, toothpaste falling out of my mouth as frothy drool. As I made my way downstairs into my front porch, I would have to put all of my weight onto the door just to open it -- the snow had grown to a monstrous size, and was trying to engulf my entire house with its weight. I trudged along, snow already slipping into my furry boots -- the snow seemed endless. I would put my foot down onto the smothered sidewalk, thinking it was crisp enough to hold my weight, and I would sink down, like I had stepped in quicksand. Hurrying as to not be late, I would try to run, but the snow slowed me down, like it wanted me to be late for the bus.

As I finally reached the stop, I sat down on the snow-covered steps of the abandoned store and breathed in the cold air. It filled my nostrils with the scent of carbon monoxide from the cars driving past and the sting of early morning. The sun had begun to rise behind the naked trees, exposing them to the chilly air. While I sat and stared at this wonder, I saw my boyfriend finally make his way over to me. His strawberry blonde hair stuck out like a bonfire in the middle of a snow-ridden field, and his oversized black skater sweatshirt looked paper thin, unable to keep the frigid air out. He stopped and gave me a peck on my frozen cheek, red with embarrassment and cold. The bus came, and we boarded it with the expectation of heat, but the bus driver had turned it off so as not to waste it. This was the beginning of the relationship. We were in puppy love mode, and the winter seemed to increase that love at first -- throwing each other in the dirty snow banks, nuzzling into recliners with cups of hot cocoa and a movie. It all seemed too perfect, and it was.

A month had passed since the birth of our young love. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and our relationship turned with it. He decided to stop being so kind to me, and his behavior morphed into something I couldn't recognize at first, but came to know it as shame. His friends didn't like me, which caused them to make fun of me every day at the bus stop as well as in school -- and he decided to join in. I dreaded each cold, stormy morning, the snowflakes falling onto my thick lashes and hiding my tears. As I walked out of my lit up house, I would pass our front yard, where all of our motorized decorations from Wal-Mart were living. They slowly moved their mechanical heads back and forth, as if they were laughing at me, making me feel that I deserved everything I was hearing from my boyfriend's mouth. He began to neglect me, and "forgot" to call when he said he would.

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