The snowy scene outside my large, front picture window, the one that takes up my entire living room wall, reminds me of a postcard.

Bright white cotton slowly and steadily blankets my driveway and builds up on the thick line of evergreen trees that lies between my nearly private street and myself, as the early-morning sun glows a soft orange from in between the tree branches, peaking out as if to say “Good morning.”

I look out at this quiet, picturesque backdrop and I feel the vulnerable rawness of my unusually rough past few days melt away ironically as the icy precipitation continues to grow and swirl.

It fascinates me that when life’s fragility strikes and haunts me, that this beauty that’s obviously always surrounding me becomes sharper and clearer around the edges, like a picture in perfect focus; yet it’s more delicate too, and almost painful to behold.

I find that I’m impatient to others’ criticisms and lack of politeness (perhaps rudeness is too extreme for me to claim in my overly sensitive state), but I’m definitely too fragile myself to spend any time arguing these points. Rather I concede and don’t feel defeated or weak for doing so; I actually feel a strange calmness and strength in my bending-near-breaking state.

My toddler parades around the wood floor of the living room in her florescent elephant footie pajamas singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” perfectly on key. She’s recently discovered that she can perfectly pronounce “up above the world” so she sings this refrain over and over. Her melodic voice fills the room along with the light from the rising sun.

I look again out our big, front picture window. The snow has quieted so much that it almost appears to have stopped falling. Likewise my emotions are gentler now, streaming through me more evenly, and I look out and notice that this blanket of snow has become littered with patches of sunny glimmer.

“What glitters isn’t always gold,” I hear whispered softly in my ear.

I have to remember to hold this fragile beauty when the darkness is gone and the world is less scary and ruthless. I have to remember why the snow falls too heavily at times, more thickly than I’d like or feel I can even handle.

“Up above the world,” my daughter sings, pointing with her tiny finger out the front window at this bright yet curiously fuzzier, more unclear representation of the same dramatically stark, crystalline landscape I’ve been so wholely immersed in.

I try to mentally imprint on my self for later that these snowstorms happen so that life’s real beauty can show; more apparent when the all the rest—this disingenuity of the happy ruse—is shadowed over.

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Ed: Bryonie Wise