Just why it should have happened, or why it should have happened just when it did, he could not, of course, possibly have said; nor perhaps could it even have occurred to him to ask. The thing was above all a secret, something to be preciously concealed from Mother and Father; and to that very fact it owed an enormous part of its deliciousness. It was like a peculiarly beautiful trinket to be carried unmentioned in one's trouser-pocket---a rare stamp, an old coin, a few tiny gold links found trodden out of shape on the path in the park, a pebble of carnelian, a sea shell distinguishable from all others by an unusual spot or stripe---and, as if it were anyone of these, he carried around with him everywhere a warm and persistent and increasingly beautiful sense of possession. Nor was it only a sense of possession---it was also a sense of protection. It was as if, in some delightful way, his secret gave him a fortress, a wall behind which he could retreat into heavenly seclusion.
I read this story for the first time today, just after I woke up, in that easy Sunday way. I hadn't known that it existed. But the title, Silent Snow, Secret Snow, intrigued me, and it was one of the shorter ones in the little paperback I was leafing through, 50 Great American Short Stories.
It's one of those short stories that are like potent poems, tight and simple, with one idea, one beautiful thought, like the gilded trinket that you keep in your pocket. The bit of intricate that comforts you.
The story was like that today. A reminder that someone else's pretty little thought could feel like warmth. The words were clear and clean, in bright fall-morning light, on a day where I had nowhere to be.
And if I never string words together again, I can collect the trinkets that I find along the way. It will be okay, if every so often, I press my fingertips to the details, scraps crafted by people who thought they might have figured out beauty for a moment.
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