Winter Wishes

Christmas Day

The holiday season was supposed to be warm and full of joy, but this year, everything only felt cold and empty. Nothing had changed—all the same people and things were around this year as had been last year—yet, Annika couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. There was a hole in her world that she needed to fill.

She stood alone over the small fountain in her aunt’s garden. It was made of white stone, and in the spring, water would bubble from the top in a constant, energized waterfall. But when it got too cold, the water was shut off, and only a shallow residual layer remained. 

The top was frozen tonight, a thin layer of snow coating it, but she had cleared a space with her gloved hand and punctured the ice so she could see the liquid water within.

There was no purpose to what she was doing, brushing snow away and cracking the ice, but it filled time and occupied her mind when nothing else could. It helped take her attention away from the loneliness of the world and the frustration she felt over her inability to place exactly why this feeling was so persistent. 

Maybe it was because it was her first Christmas since finishing college, her first Christmas in the “real” world with a “real” job. There was officially no denying that she wasn’t a kid anymore, no matter how much she felt like she still knew nothing about anything.

“I thought I might find you here.”

Her dad’s voice was low and raspy as always as he walked up to her, feet crunching in the snow, and stopped by her side. When his shoulder brushed hers, all she wanted was to lean into him, to let him hold her. Then, maybe she would feel less alone, and the warmth of his body would heal the chill in her bones. But she didn’t move. She couldn’t bring herself to.

“What’s wrong, kiddo?” he asked. She could feel him looking at her, eyebrows furrowed with concern. “You didn’t seem quite like yourself at dinner.”

Annika didn’t know what to say. Did she tell him the full truth? A half-truth? But how could she do that when she herself wasn’t sure what exactly was wrong? Maybe she should just tell him to go away. But that solution wasn’t any better.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess everything just feels… big.”

There was no other word for it, vague as it was. It was one of those feelings that just didn’t feel real, a feeling beyond complete human comprehension.

“The world certainly is big,” her father said. “And it feels bigger now that you’re on your own. Right?”

She looked up at him. His brown eyes were nearly black in the moonlight, his nose turning pink with the cold. Tiny flakes of snow gathered in the wool threads of his knit hat. “Yeah,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “There’s so much going on. So many people. So many places.”

“And it makes you feel small?”

Annika nodded. The sheer complexity of the world made her feel tiny and insignificant, and the chill of the winter months had only made it worse. Heaters blasted in buildings and fires raged in fireplaces. When they went outside, people, herself included, bundled up until they could hardly move their torsos, and when they stayed in, they wrapped themselves in blankets and wore comfortable, fuzzy clothes. Still, the air was polarizing, and the sky was gray. The wind whipped with a vengeance. And no amount of togetherness could make her feel entirely warm. 

“There’s pressure. To be big, to make something of myself. But everyone can’t be big because then big would just be average. Instead, most of us are little.” She hadn’t realized the words were there until they came out of her mouth, but once she said them, she knew she had pinpointed the root of her problem. 

“And sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t have it all together,” she said. “Logically, I know that’s not true, but it seems like everyone else gets what they want. Like everyone else’s lives are perfect.”

Her father shook his head, if only slightly. “You see what people want you to see. They want you to think they have it all, so that’s the version of themselves that they show off.” The snow was falling harder now, the fat flakes enough to slightly obscure his face in the darkness. “But just because something looks good on the outside doesn’t necessarily mean that it actually is. And sometimes, a mess is actually better.”

Annika wanted to shake her head and tell him he was wrong. Messy things were stressful and chaotic. They weren’t part of the picture-perfect world everybody fought to have. But did that mean they didn’t have value?

She thought about her own family and their Christmas celebrations earlier that day. There was plenty of chaos in every aspect of their gathering. Her aunt and uncle arguing in the kitchen, her cousins chattering away in every room of the house—the older ones gossiping about other family members, getting sloppily drunk, or both, while the younger ones ran around screaming—and her younger brother carelessly tossing people their presents from under the tree, managing to hit and shatter one of her aunt’s vintage vases in the process, even her grandpa dropping a platter of sugar cookies on the floor, which her cousins and her uncle’s cat ate anyway, claiming they couldn’t let anything go to waste. The festivities had been modest and truly messy, but overall, the day had been a good one. Just like every year before it.

But she still felt an ache in her chest.

Her dad’s hand was firm but gentle on her shoulder as he wrapped his arm around her. She leaned into him; she didn’t have to say a word for him to know what she was thinking or feeling. One look at her and he could tell. 

He smelled faintly of wine as he whispered, “Do you remember going to see the Christmas lights in the city when you were little?”

How could she forget? He and her mother would take her—and eventually her brother—to wander around the main square of the city, where all the buildings were decorated with twinkling lights and there was always a Christmas tree that seemed to her like it was just as tall as the skyscrapers. Hundreds of ornaments hung from its branches in a rainbow of colors, and the yellow lights wrapped around it almost seemed like little candles, all leading up to the gold star that stood atop it all. 

There was always an ice rink and plenty of stalls where they could buy cookies and hot cocoa. There was even a place to visit Santa Claus, complete with real reindeer, although she was always disappointed to find none of them ever had a shiny red nose.

And there was a fountain, about five times as big as the one she stood over now, where they would stop and toss pennies into still, half-frozen water.

She smiled. “Of course.”

“Do you remember what we did there?” her dad asked. “At the fountain?”

“We made wishes,” she said.

“Exactly.” He reached into his pocket and fished around until he pulled out a small coin, holding it like a fragile flower in the palm of his gloved hand. 

The snow swirled around them, mixing with the fog of their breaths as it looped through the air. Her father looked at her, eyes bright. “Make a wish,” he said, pressing the penny into her palm, its copper warm from his pocket.

She looked at it and turned it over in her hand, her gaze tracing the edges of Lincoln’s silhouette. When she tried to speak, her voice came out as small as she felt. “It won’t come true.”

“Then wish for something impossible.”

“Why?”

“Well, if it won’t come true anyway, what’s the harm?”

Though she had to roll them first, she closed her eyes and tossed the coin into the water. There was a soft thwack as its edge hit part of the cracked ice before slipping entirely into the liquid. As it sank to the bottom, she made her wish.

I wish the world were just a little bit warmer. And happier. Even if it’s just for tonight.

Nothing wild, and nothing specific. But something she knew couldn’t just happen with the flick of a switch. 

Her chest rose slowly as her lungs filled with air, and it fell as she exhaled, opening her eyes. Even the dim moonlight felt like a shock, reflecting off the thickening sheet of snow on the ground.

“Well,” her father said, “what’d you wish for, Annie?”

His voice echoed in her head with the words he’d always said to her when she was a child. She repeated them, “If I tell you, it won’t come true.”

He smiled. “I thought it wouldn’t come true anyway.”

Annika shrugged. “You won’t know if you don’t try.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

Nothing happened, and she didn’t expect it to, but her father was right. Even if she knew something wasn’t likely to work, sometimes it was necessary to at least try anyway. Especially when it came to something like this, what was the harm?

They stood there, together, for what could have been an hour or only a short moment. The wind had calmed, but fat snowflakes continued to fall. It was the good snow, she thought with a smile, the kind that was fluffy, that made a crunching sound beneath her feet, that could be easily picked up and packed into snowballs or used to make snowmen. It was the type of snow that lingered for a while, nothing like the gross, sloshy snow that they usually got stuck with. And it absorbed the sounds of the world, until the night was quiet and still and soft. If it weren’t for the cold, she could have basked in it forever.

But it was cold, almost unbearably so, even through her layers. Her body had started to shake as her fingers and toes went numb, and the chill burned her eyes. If she stayed out in it much longer, her tears would start to freeze.

She looked up at her dad, sure her face was at least as flushed as his—which was now turning red—if not more so. “It’s probably time to go inside,” she said.

“Okay, if you’re ready,” he said, pulling his arms out from around her and twitching with the sensation of the cold. “Do you feel any better?”

“A little,” she said, not lying but not telling the truth either. She didn’t feel quite so bad anymore, but she couldn’t place the new, almost tingly feeling she had now. It wasn’t good, just different.

They wandered slowly back to the house, warm yellow light spilling out from its windows. Even through the brick and the glass, she could hear voices. Nobody in her family knew how to keep their volume down. Sometimes, when she was with them, she wondered how it was that she missed the noise so much when she was alone.

But even over the sound of loud, jumbled speaking, and her own footsteps, she could hear something else. Something small and weak. Whimpering.

She stopped. It sounded close.

Frowning, her father looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

Her alarm was unmasked on her face, and she made no effort to hide it. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

It happened again, another slight, shaky whimper. This time, he heard it too.

Without a word, they followed the sound to a bush beneath the kitchen window. The curtains were drawn, but Annika could see silhouettes chatting inside.

Her father didn’t hesitate, pulling back the snow-covered branches and digging around until he took a sharp intake of breath. “What is it?” she asked, but he didn’t answer, already reaching inside.

She craned her neck to see what he had grabbed as he started to straighten again, and when she saw it, she had to gasp a little too.

It was a puppy, little and wide-eyed, squirming in her father’s grasp. It was shaking, too. 

Annika reached out, and her father allowed her to take it from him. Though it relaxed slightly, it continued to tremble.

It was the ugliest dog she had ever seen, but she couldn’t help but find it just as adorable, with its big bug eyes and a body that was almost entirely hairless save for some scraggly white fur at the top of its head. Its pink tongue hung out of the side of its mouth, long and limp. 

The dog clung to her like she was the only safe thing it had ever known in the world, and she looked up at her father, a silent question in her eyes. Do we take it inside? The answer was yes.

They tried to find someone nearby who might have been missing a puppy, but to no avail. Her aunt had scoured neighborhood chats online, her father and uncle had knocked on the doors of a few surrounding houses, and Annika and her cousins had searched the puppy—which they had quickly determined was female—for any sign that it had come from someone’s home. She was clearly very young, likely only a few months old, but she didn’t even have stitches to suggest that she had been spayed. 

All signs indicated that she was a stray. So, when she had left her aunt’s house with her parents at the end of the night, Annika had taken the dog with her. 

Now, she sat with her in her parents’ living room, wrapped in a blanket with a fire crackling in the fireplace. Everyone else had gone to bed, and only the fire’s orange light illuminated the body of the puppy sleeping in her arms. Winnie, she had decided to call her.

Annika had wished for a warmer world, for a happier one, even if the scale of it was small. And now, she had to wonder if her wish had really been so impossible. It seemed that the universe had a way of bringing warmth and joy in the most unexpected ways.