End of an Era

I had my first last today.

To be truthful, it wasn't the first of them. But it was the first one that felt real, the understanding that the life I've lived for the past four years is coming to an end, no matter how excited I am for it. I've started feeling the lasts more and more: last lab, last HOPE summit, last spring break. But this one is the one that snuck up on me, because it's one of those things you don't think of until it's over (hopefully).

I had my last Buffalo snow.

It wasn't much of anything, but it was enough to curse when I opened the blinds, the wet, cold flakes promising nothing but a cold, windy, supposedly spring day. It didn't even stick, just made for a decidedly colder day than I'd been hoping for, thoughts of a warm spring sun lost behind the heavy grey clouds. It wasn't until that afternoon that I had that lightening bolt moment of wait- that could be the last snow I ever experience as a Buffalonian before I graduate. Only then did I mourn it. Hell, it might not even be the last, it's still April, and Buffalo holds onto snowy springs like nothing else.

Snow in Buffalo is as well known as Niagara Falls and the Buffalo Bills, sandwiched somewhere in the identity of the Queen City so tightly you can't have this place without it. As a Texan, it was all I would hear when folks back home heard I was going to school in Buffalo, it's all anyone wants to share about it. The tales of lake effect snow and winters piled deep underneath mountains of fresh powder, of digging out Highmark so the playoffs can get on (Go Bills!) follow someone from Buffalo anywhere they go. I'm not from this place, but I've lived here, matured here, and I've been lucky enough to call Buffalo my home for four years.

The snow lives up to all its stories, but I've found so much more beyond it.

I could list all the things that make Buffalo, Buffalo (wings with blue cheese, the Bills, potholes, you get the idea), but to be honest, I can't encapsulate a city into simple words. Because this city isn't the buildings that makes it, its the people. We're the city of good neighbors after all. I found my people here, who celebrated that first Buffalo snow with me, and bemoaned the last.

And while I can't wait to graduate, to move into this new stage of life past undergrad, I find myself thinking back to that last(?) snow. Because it's one of those things you don't realize are over until they are. All the other lasts, they're final, a mark in the calendar. Holidays and classes and club events all have end dates, you can mark them down, see it. But it's the little things, the ones you can't predict, that last snow, that make it feel so much more real. There was no planning, no foresight, no mental preparation. It simply happened, and then was over. It's a reminder perhaps, that in the dawn of change to not hold onto, but rather appreciate the little things, even the ones that bring a cold, wet, spring day.