It was snowing today. A lot.

I actually hesitated, not knowing whether I should write “it was snowing,” “it snowed,” or “we had snow.” What a strange thing to say: we had snow. What a human thing to pretend to own something that could never belong to anyone. No, we didn’t have snow. The snow fell from the white expanse of the sky, quickly and angrily at first, chased by the wind, then slowly, as if apologising for earlier brutality. “It snowed” has a sad finality about it and, not liking the past tense in general, I settled on “it was snowing.”

I got caught in the angry part of snow, while I was walking to my therapy session. During the session, Maya said “you’ve never allowed yourself to fall apart.” She said it without a hint of judgment, but not as if it was a good thing. And I had a moment of recognition, not only of myself, but of my mother, her frail figure at the kitchen table when dad had his accident. She would come home after ten or twelve hours of senseless, back-breaking work, disappear into the kitchen and smoke, smoke, smoke. But never fall apart, not once during those seven years. I recognised her mother, whom I saw only on photos. How old was she, about twenty or younger, when Germans took her from her family and forced her to work at the rope factory as a de-facto slave. Falling apart is not in my genes, we simply don’t do this. There will be nobody to pick us up.

Still, I wonder, what it would feel like. I wonder, if I’d let myself fall apart, just a little, if I allowed myself some deep rest, would the effect of it reverberate back to my mother? Would it travel in time to heal the wounds? Would it actually help?