IT LOOKED LIKE A SPRING flower dancing with the wind. Then they all came, little balls of white, touched by heaven.

I was amused. Then it suddenly dawned on me. I leapt to one glass window and I knew. The other window said yes, it was what I thought it was. Out the door I jumped.

It was the first snowflake of my first winter.

I looked up and tried to catch them in my mouth. I jumped and skipped and they came on me endlessly, so soft and loving, not hurting you like raindrops do. I caught one in my hand. Then it melted. Snowflakes are not meant to be caught.

I went back inside the house and got startled by how those few naughty snowflakes had now carpeted the gardens with a swath of white. No wonder they melted so fast: they had to redo the carpeting of autumn.

I wept at how beautiful the Christmas card was. Yup, the house window looked like a virtual Christmas card sent to you by people who love the first snowflake.

I am still weeping now. The snowflakes are gone. I don’t miss them.

I miss the time and flutter I exchanged for that first winter I spent so far away from my son.

I read a poem once:

“Away, Away
Away, my dream
My funny heart
My everyday heaven.

Away, my sight
My painful touch
My wet eyes.

I have been taken away
To pain
To thorns
To desperation.

Away.
A mother,
A son.
Adskilt.”

(Adskilt is the Nordic word for separated)

Mother

Just for curiosity, just to show you care, just to add to the statistics, just to find out how her heart beats: Have you ever asked a mother who works abroad to save for her family (she is typically called an overseas Foreign worker) how she feels about holding another’s child, making sure he is bathed and happy, bringing him to school each day, and teaching him how to say his night prayers before he goes to sleep—while her own is lost forever from her touch and the wake of time has robbed her from seeing her own child grow up and smile and call her “Mommy!” when he comes home?

I weep for me and for her. I weep for all the lost snowflakes that have dripped through my hands for the time I was not with my son. Suddenly, the snowflakes have turned to blood.

You cannot give that working mother back time.
You cannot give me back time.

Even if I want the snowflakes to not to turn to blood, my wound will not scar. And neither will the wound I inflicted on my son.

He is now an adolescent. Between babyhood and manhood.

His eyes sparkle with the most beautiful smile I will ever see; but his eyes frighten when I still think he is a baby and I hug him so tight, trying to get back all the lost hugs that time cheated me of.

He is not a baby anymore, he says. I try so hard to remember.

But like time, you cannot give me back my lost hugs.

A mother’s heart is different. I think God made it that way. A Mother’s heart can take slashes of knives and a swift samurai sword to behead it. But still it beats. Her children are the swabs that heal it, free of scars.

But a Son’s heart is different. Once it is stabbed by a dagger, the wound heals but a scar is always there.

Next time you see a mother dropping her bags at the airport when she sees her little ones, or taking her kids to the mall and buying them everything they want just to grab a slice of that time she has lost—say a sweet prayer for her and thank God she is home. And so are you.

As for me, I have seen the sun now. And He is loving me again.

Finally, I have seen the last snowflake.

The author is a stage actress who appeared in “Vagina Monologues” and is back from Norway—for good.