From under long blonde bangs shone eyes the colour of wet earth, and below that a nose so freckled that the brown splotches overlapped much like fall leaves after a wind storm. Her smile was warm with a hint of shyness. I loved her already.
She awoke Christmas morning to the sound of her son laughing in his bedroom and her heart sank right through her skin onto the floorboards she had slept on. She didn't need to wake, the night had come and gone without unconsciousness for even a moment. In seconds she was down the stairs and pulling on her boots. He was calling her from the stairs now, "Mommy, has Santa been?" She didn't turn around just in case she could see him, instead she embraced the frigid air without even a jacket and got in her frosted car. She had to get to the cemetery, take him his stocking and blow him his Christmas kiss. Perhaps then he would settle into her memories for another year, content to be silent, invisible. By the time she was at the small marble tombstone she had no memory of how she'd got there or where she'd parked the car. As her eyes settled on the text her chest constricted, breathing became hard as she placed the red velvet on the icy grass. With shaking hand she blew a salty kiss...
Blind from birth, the spring was all about the sounds, the tastes and the rising air temperature for Mila. With keen awareness of the frigidity of winter rain, she knew before her keen sighted friends when the winter season was in transition. She felt the breeze kiss her more warmly and let her hands explore the overhanging branches of neighbourhood trees to find the swelling buds- buds that would soon crack open to release the soft papery leaves within.The myriad of verdant hues from the grass to the leaves above were lost to her; but their gentle fragrance never was. She would take a new lush blade or leaf and rub it between her fingers, releasing its perfume. She knew the flowers of her neighbourhood by their scents, either that which they released to the damp air or by crushing a petal to release the aromatic sap. She knew the call of each bird species and marked the progress of the season with their song.
His laughing was like ripples in a still pond after a stone has been thrown in. It radiated outwards through the packed hall of children who had up until that moment been quite silent. Now they too began to titter and soon the ripples of laughter became great waves of hilarity.
The seasons come and go like old friends. They bring memories of seasons past and the promise of seasons to come. They dance by us changing gradually in their back and forth way, two steps forward and one step back. And like time itself we cannot halt them, we cannot hang on to spring or keep the summer with us for longer. Each has their time, their moment, their season.