It was when Jiji swapped the normal car tires for the hardier snow ones that Haruka’s heart would sink. The winter months ushered in Mama’s sadness. The snow would begin to fall in November, blanketing the earth in silence, a bright white stretching as far as the eye could see. The six-foot-high walls of snow would loom above Haruka as she braved the walk to school, the muddy clouds above threatening to break open and add to the bleak architecture. At home, the windows on the ground floor were encased in snow so thick that, even in the middle of the day, all the lights had to be switched on if you wanted to see the floor beneath you. Money was scarcer in those months because Mama found it difficult to get out of bed. The lights remained off, the first floor turning frigid and inhospitable. Every winter, Baba would lug Mama’s futon upstairs so she could wake to the occasional sunlit morning. Mama would lie there with her back to the room, hair spilling out behind her.
Haruka would go to her after school and plait and plait her mama’s hair. She would sing to her while braiding, a song about spring that Mama sometimes sang to Haruka when her spirit was alive. She would watch her mother for any signs of life—a swallow, a parting of lips, anything to know there was someone still there.
Everything seemed to drag during those winters. The soul was not fit to endure such sparseness. All living things were consumed by the ceaseless drift of white. It would encase the land in an absence of colour. The same absence that fell on a mother’s love until it was impossible to find, lost to the winds and grey skies. Each day passed much the same as the last. From November to early March, life was a repetition of short days and shivering nights that kept the people of Tokamachi tangled up in shoulder knots. If it wasn’t for her mother’s sadness, Haruka would have whole-heartedly loved the snow. She enjoyed sledging down the hills on her red plastic sheet. She loved building snowmen and eating falling snowflakes. She relished the steaming bowls of clam chowder she was given at school most Thursdays in winter. She loved the snow festival that happened every year. The giant sculptures that towered over her, that made her feel as small as a crumb.
Sometimes, when the ice began to melt, or the first crocus stood shivering and purple against the white, Haruka would come back from school, take off her snow boots and be greeted with the smell of chestnut dorayaki frying in the pan. The smell was so sweet and so rare that, every time she encountered it, it was as if a great stone was being lifted from her small chest. The smell meant that her mother was up and having a good day. The smell held the promise of a vision seldom seen: Mama standing by the stovetop in her apron, turning at the sound of footsteps and smiling at Haruka. The kind of smile to break deep winter. She would hold a finger to her lips and point to Baba, exhausted and dozing beneath the thick blankets of the kotatsu. Her mouth open in soft sleep, silver molars flashing in the low sun. Haruka would grin and run to her mama, whispering for a warm, honeyed pancake. Those were the winter days Haruka tried to remember. The two of them pottering around the house. Baba and the snow glistening in easeful rest.