Dichotomy

Dichotomy-written November 2025

Dichotomy: Noun

Definition: A difference between two completely opposite ideas or things

*Cambridge Dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/dichotomy

 

We had a freak snowstorm, an early snowstorm, the first of the season. It’s not unusual to receive a frost at this time of year. But, this was a strong snowstorm for this time of year. “An inch of snow on Monday” local newscasters said. Yeah, I’ll believe it when I see it, I thought to myself.

Sunday afternoon the first snowflakes began to fall. I found the event to be so completely bizarre that I took pictures of it snowing. The photo showed a haziness in the atmosphere, not snow falling from the sky. It wasn’t until there was enough snow on the grass, on the tops of cars, that the snowfall could be seen in a photograph.

Monday morning I awoke to a sight that took me by complete surprise: an inch of snow on my car. They were right. 

I’ll be darned. I’ll have to go out early, to get all the snow off my car. Better go out thirty minutes early. That should do it.

I got ready for work, and set out for my day. I took a broom down to my car, to get the first great swaths of snow off. My ice scraper was in my car; of course I’d have to unearth the car to get to it.

I meticulously cleaned off my car. Only then could I safely drive to work. I don’t ever want snow to blow off my car to the people behind me, or onto my own windshield.

*
I drove to work down the quiet city streets, little traffic on the roads. It was quiet audibly that day as well, the noise of the world dampened by the snow. I grew surprised as I took that drive that day. I saw a sight I had never before seen: trees full of leaves.

Where I live, the first big snowstorm happens after the trees have lost all their leaves. When the first major snow falls, the leaves are usually on the ground, under the snow. But, this snowstorm arrived early. Snow covered the entirety of the landscape. Yet, I saw rows and rows of trees with bountiful autumn leaves still on their branches, surrounded by fresh snowfall on the ground.

The vibrant autumn leaves were set off perfectly by the snow. The trees had shapes to them, rounded, bulbous shapes, framed by new fallen snow. 

Bountiful trees. Trees with orange and brown leaves, and every color in between, swathed in snow, as far as the eye could see.

Again, this storm was early this autumn, just after Halloween. It looked like it had taken Mother Nature by surprise. 

It was the most bizarre thing I’d ever seen in the fall. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that before in my life. It was like seeing an inch of snow on the Fourth of July. It just doesn’t happen here.

What a dichotomy, I thought to myself. What a juxtaposition: an inch of snow on the ground, with healthy trees full of leaves in vibrant fall colors. We just don't see this here, ever.

*
The dichotomy hasn’t left me. The image still resonates with me. I can't shake it, I can't let go of it. 

What a bizarre sight. This can't be. This shouldn’t be. The snow fell, and the trees....still had leaves.......

That’s not what happens. That’s not what’s supposed to happen. The trees lose their leaves. Then it snows. 

Yet there are both trees covered in leaves and snow on the ground. How can two such things, that are polar opposites, be true at the same time?!?

*
This event, this sight, made me think of grief. That was the only metaphor my brain could discern. 

This cannot be. It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t have happened this way. Why did it happen this way?

We who survive are left with an uncomfortable truth, a constant truth. Our loved one is gone. The world should stop when our loved ones die. But it doesn’t. Life goes on.

Things will happen the way they happen. We are not in control of anything that happens. That is the fact of life and death. 

People die. Mothers die. Kitty cats die. Yet life goes on. 

Perhaps that is the lesson: to become comfortable with the uncomfortable truth.

Change and growth through our grief will only happen once we are fully able to embrace, and become comfortable with, the dichotomy.

"Beginning of Snow" by Esperanza Habla