Snow in the palm of my hand.

I am headed by bus to the #Dolomites, the alps above #Venice. I'm returning to my late husband's apartment in a village high up in the mountains, #auronzodicadore. It'll be my home away from home for the next year. It's a place I've never really connected with. We would arrive in the height of summer, the towering mountains seemed oppressive and the village isolated by them. I would become restless within days and make my way solo, back to the delicacy of Venezia, a city of manmade extraordinary beauty, leaving the husband and the daughter behind; and then would return briefly before we made our way back home. A nephew who was living here for a year with his family, picked me up and drove me through the valleys and forests; under snow!

I had never seen it in the winter. I had never seen it dressed like a goddess, in a drapery of white. It was stupendous. The lake was a frozen patchwork of turquoise patches on a sheet of ice; the pines weighted down with icicles. It reminded me of Narnia. I fell in love. But I was too scared to go out in case I slipped on the icy steep pathway down to the shops. Luckily the fridge had been filled and the nephew had made a family dinner for me. The daughter was arriving the next day. I would send her for supplies.

I entered the apartment and opened the balcony doors, the sun was setting at 3.30, the mountains in front of me had turned to a slush of gelato pink edged in rose gold. I breathed in the pure iced air and wished I had been here in winter with the late husband. Why had we never experienced a winter here? We did venture out for the thick Italian hot chocolate with whipped cream that finally seemed right to have during this season rather than in the summer when we normally would come and go up into the mountains to have one.

That night, my phone showed the snowflake emoji from midnight onwards. I awoke without an alarm and rushed to the window just after 12 and there was the soft fall of flakes in the dense blackness of night. I put my palm out for them to fall on but they were miniscule. I didn't care. I woke so many times during the night, my amazement never failing. The phrase, a winter wonderland now had new meaning. But I didn't stay long.