Snow Globes

I live in a snow globe.

They say the world is getting smaller and smaller. I don't know about that. Yes, I know communication across the oceans is instant--all types: written, spoken and visual. We can watch history being made on every continent before it gets a chance to make it in the history books and see the untamed exotic lands afar and outer spaces. But really we don't see it, really. We only look at it through the screen on TV or hear it on the radio waves or read it online. Our so called, global perspective is more of a couch kind of perspective. Technology in a sense, only reveals how inclosed our life can really be, untouched by the outside world. The world is still big, our lives, however, are getting smaller and smaller in a way. I think it's better to say that we live in a big world comprised of billions of tiny separate little worlds, like a gigantic cluster of snow globes orbiting the sun.

Anyone who has traveled to any country other than their own knows that when you are there, it's hard to rightly remember your country of origin. One's senses become completely overtaken by the world that you are in now; the smells, the sounds, the textures and landscapes consume the cells of your brain and the memory of the previous world becomes foggy at best. It's like your brain can only handle one snow globe world at a time. It knows you came from a different country but it only knows it like a dream knows your awake world or like a long echo in shiny tall cathedral knows its caller.

It is Christmas today. I saw only half of my family this holiday. The other half lives in a different snow globe. Right now in their little world, the air is warm and smells like sweet trees and woodsmoke. You can almost lick the air it's so sticky. They live in the snow globe where I used to live.

I wonder about my daughter. Will she ever know what it's like to play in the glittery rain with her cousins? Ten years from now, will she point something out in a store that she just knows Emily would like, or happen to know that the guitar part in the song on the radio is Caleb's favorite, or know Julia's two favorite colors, or tell me that she's going over to Grandma's on Friday night to bake Christmas cookies?

Or will we always live snow globes apart?

My hubby tells me I can't think like that too far into the future. I hope he is right. For now, I will tell my Penelope dreamy, echo-y pretty stories of the snow globe mama came from and teach her songs and dances I used to play with my loving sisters and brother.

This Christmas night, I press my face against the thick glass of my snow globe; it feels cold. I close my eyes and I can almost feel the glittery sun on my face.