Sol de invierno, sale tarde y se pone presto.
We wouldn’t have used the winter sun to describe friendship, but that is what this proverb does. It says that something that starts strong doesn’t last long and easily comes to an end.
There is a garden in the north. At first sight it seems to be full of ice sculptures. But the truth is that they are frozen children. It is said that childhood has a summer and it has a winter. Summer is happiness and carefreeness. Winter is when children realize that one day they will have to grow up. The first day of winter children are given a choice. They can stay in the south, and be treated like adults once that winter comes to an end. Or they can be sent north, to a cold place where their childhood will never end.
This is the story of two friends that don’t want to give their friendship up. Because they have looked around, and they haven’t even caught a glimpse of the friendship they cherish in any of the adults that live in the south. So they travel north. Until they arrive at that garden. With its magical ice. That melts during the day and freezes during the night. Stopping the children’s growth, so that their friendship never ends. And even though the children know that the nights are longer than the days, they don’t mind. They don’t mind sleeping inside that ice. Because they are still children. And they still believe in things like friendship.
I measure my life in memories, in things that are worth remembering. Our friendship is one such thing. I don’t mind sleeping inside ice the rest of the time, if it means that I will get to wake up to our friendship every day.
They promised that nothing would change. That we would never grow up, and we would always be friends. They promised that our friendship would stay the same. But it’s cold here. It’s too cold. I no longer remember how we used to play, the things that made us laugh under the sun, when all around us there was only warmth and carefree joy. And if I can no longer remember that, it must mean that something has changed. That they lied. And our friendship won’t last.
This is what I like about childhood. That there isn’t a day when I don’t go to sleep with a smile still on my face. That I dream about the future. About the myriad of wonderful things that are still out there, waiting for us to discover or experience them. I am glad we chose to come here. To this garden. Before we lost our capacity to dream, or those dreams became just a cover, something pretty, to keep the ugly world that we would have grown to hate out of sight.
Look at all that snow. How do you want to play first? Do you want to fight? Or do you want to spread your arms and make an angel? It’s our childhood, and no one is here to tell us how to behave. It’s just you, me, and all this snow, waiting for us.
Do you know why all the ice sculptures of this garden are swans? It’s because all the children that have been sent here have chosen friendship to be their swan song. They have chosen to preserve their childhood friendships as they are. Beautiful. Joyous. Wonderful things. Everything adult friendships are not. Because adults have no illusions, they aren’t naive, and they see their friendships for what they really are.
I want to remember our friendship like a snowflake. Like something magical, that made my childhood better. I don’t want to look back and see a puddle of melted ice on the ground. I don’t want to realize that all we did together was a waste of time.
Under the sun, our friendship will thrive. We will amass enough memories to be able to stay warm when the time comes to go to sleep inside the ice again.
They say that we will miss a lot of things if we never grow up, but I don’t care. I never liked the moon anyway. Playing with our friends all day long will be worth all those nights we will spend frozen in the garden.