33° Fahrenheit, its the perfect temperature for snow. Just cold enough to crystallize the moisture in the air and just warm enough for those crystals to find each other and cling. Huge clumps of snowflakes fall so soft and silent that you strain your ears trying to hear the sound of their falling. The silence is the best part though. There's no howling wind rushing its way through the air breaking apart the delicate huddles of drifting ice. No, there isn't even a breath of wind to flutter the snowflakes on their straight but gentle path to Earth.
I love this temperature. It always seems to take me home. Home to marshmallows in hot chocolate. To Grandpa H and the smell of him that will never leave my nose (and I hope never will). To icicles that reach from roof to sidewalk. To the strangely comforting blues my father evokes from my mother's piano.
This temperature takes me to chilly but exciting courtship walks with my husband where he stops for a full ten minuets to script my name across a campus lawn. It shows me hospital furnishings desperately trying to pass themselves off as home decor and a tiny yellow bow glued into the hair above the most beautiful face I have ever seen in my life.
This temperature creates the perfect environment for things to come together. Small fragile crystals of ice on their way back to Earth.
