My ice powers have lain dormant for years. Yet, when news of last week’s blizzard hit Providence, I could feel them stirring. Knowing that these college years will be among my last unburdened by driveway shoveling, I promised myself I’d make the most of the storm. And so, I laid out my heavy-duty North Face gloves, played the Weather Channel in the background, and laced up an obnoxiously furry pair of boots. No amount of snow could keep me trapped in Perkins.
Caught in the sort of frenzy only a northeasterner could understand, I was met with skepticism from my Miami-born roommate, who asked if preparing for the blizzard was anything like bracing for a hurricane. We traded stories about the weather emergencies we’d each normalized in our opposite childhoods. Despite my constant reassurances, she insisted on Instacarting enough food to last us the entire weekend, lest the snow block us in. Just in the nick of time, we had all we needed: a bowl of Parmesan cheese, a box of rigatoni, and a stick of butter.
Long before makeshift meals in the Perkins kitchen and Providence blizzards, I was convinced I had a special relationship with the cold. On Halloween in 2013, I pinned my hair into a long French braid, slid on flimsy, gem-studded party-store gloves, and hummed Let It Go as I prepared to make my appearance as the Snow Queen herself. Four other girls dressed in identical outfits, but fully committed to the bit, I swore to my parents that not only did I have a supernatural resistance to the cold, but also that, if I stepped on a patch of fresh snow, it would crystallize beneath my feet, just like it did with Elsa. I used to trace this power back to my birth on a mid-December day, when the roads were hardly driveable and the city was already frozen over. The ice, I reasoned, must’ve known I was coming.
Where I grew up, no one flinched at the sound of news reporters frantically announcing unprecedented wintery mixes barreling toward the Tri-State Area. Instead, people got their shovels out, excessively salted the roads, and gave the school buses ten extra minutes to warm up. Snowy school days unfolded like any other, save for stolen glances out the windows when teachers weren’t looking and salt-stained carpets marked with residue carried in by Sorel snow boots.
The football players shook snowflakes from their mullets, the popular girls traded Brandy Melville crop tops for thermal sweaters, the strictest teachers’ noses flushed red as they distributed quizzes they wouldn’t dream of canceling–even in the middle of a nor’easter. Entire classrooms bonded over the power losses that swept across town the night before, comparing our respective adventures during the night devoid of electricity. Then, in quiet solidarity, we’d open two tabs on our computers: the day’s assignment on one, a snow day calculator on the other. Together, we silently prayed for an early dismissal.
There’s something non-threatening about snow—the way it conceals rocky terrain and smooths everything over.
**
When Frozen 2 came out, I rolled my eyes the entire way to the theater. Adolescence had washed away the fantasies that fueled my childhood confidence. I covered my face with my hood as we took our seats, keeping a careful distance from my younger sister, who was now wearing my old Halloween costume. I tried to feign nonchalance—to convince myself as much as the rest of the audience that I was indifferent to this childish phenomenon, and that I’d rather be watching a PG-13 movie. But all the eye rolls, “ugh”s, and crossed arms couldn’t keep me from remembering “Water has memory.” Olaf says these words as he uncovers a forgotten memory, revealing the origin of Elsa’s powers. At the time, I brushed off the cringeworthy line as another Disney cliché.
Still, estrangement never meant absence. Something in me stayed attuned to water in all its forms, like it was waiting for me. Tenth-grade chemistry taught me that the freezing and melting points of water were both 0 degrees Celsius. But my all-time favorite feature of the temperature/pressure graph was the “Triple Point”: the precise temperature and pressure conditions—0.01 degrees Celsius and 611 pascals—at which solid, liquid, and gas can coexist in equilibrium. Because the conditions required to achieve this state occur far below atmospheric pressure, the triple point almost never exists on Earth’s surface. Something about that perfect mystery of it all made me itch to feel magic again. To remember…
**
I awoke to a new sort of snow day last week. This time, I hadn’t done a sequence of pre-bedtime incantations to summon the rough weather conditions. I didn’t sleep with a spoon under my pillow (or partake in any other superstitions, for that matter). And I certainly didn’t stalk the snow day calculator the entire previous day in hopes that my watchful eyes would force the percentage of school cancellations to rise. A real storm hadn’t hit since my early childhood. Thanks to global warming, my recent attempts at snow summoning were met with disappointment. In fact, I had developed a personal vendetta against the meteorologists who always seemed to overestimate the extent of the damage. I longed for the earth to be swallowed by snow, for the world to hold its breath.
I had taught myself to throw all expectations of winter wonderlands to the wayside. But this time was different. White flurries were all I could see looking out of my third-story window. I had been proven wrong. The northeast snow wasn’t gone—just dormant. It was time to seize it.
Without sparing a minute of leisure, our motley crew of three (my roommate and I picked up our Californian friend on the way) ventured out. The Bay Area, she said, doesn’t see blizzards—only droughts. She braved her first snow, resembling a fish out of water in the best way possible—exactly how I would appear if I were to wash up on the Pacific shore. It was then, standing in the center of the dirt-stained snowbank, that I remembered how much I wanted to learn to surf. I imagined myself visiting her home city: a former Ice Queen turned water-bender.
The three of us hurried back inside Perkins, starving, like my sisters and I used to be after a day of playing in the snow meticulously supervised from the kitchen window by our paranoid mom, who’d be preparing hot chocolate for us. Only this time, we were left to fend for ourselves in a ransacked kitchen with three ingredients, a second-hand pot retrieved from dorm storage, and the same amount of delusion that convinced nine-year-old me that I could control the snow.
Steam began escaping from the pot of heating water, and we gathered around it, our faces welcoming the warmth of the evaporating water.
“How do I know when it’s time to put the pasta into the water? Is it boiling?”
“Well, that depends,” answered our friend. “Are you looking for a rolling boil?” I exchanged glances with my roommate, and we burst into laughter at the assumption that we had basic culinary knowledge. We stood there for a moment, baffled at our lack of productivity. In fact, the only thing I would have to show for the day’s work would be this very meal.
Soon, the water in the pot began to slosh and escape from the small pot we’d obviously overfilled. Bubbles churned and rose to the top, and steam rocketed upwards. I lowered the heat amidst our hysterical fit, which only grew more boisterous when we realized that I still had snow chunks clinging to my sleeves, hanging like tiny icicles.
And there it was—our own triple point. Water as steam, liquid, and solid occupying the same room. We stood there, uniquely situated on what felt like the precipice of the rest of our lives. For a split second, peering down at those little icicles surrounded by steam, I felt like I could make the ground freeze beneath my feet if I wanted to.
College, I’ve realized, is a kind of limbo. People insist that these are the best years life has to offer, and that letting them pass you by is a mistake you’ll regret. They say that we’re at this pinnacle—a peak we ought to savor lest it slip away. Perhaps this stage is something even rarer: a triple point where the careless delusion of childhood, the confused angst of adolescence, and the assertive impatience of adulthood intersect. A moment where we are allowed to entertain the possibility of being everything all at once. The calm before the blizzard of commitment.
And so the three of us walked into the Perkins kitchen during the most severe blizzard of 2026 thus far. We ate a forgettable meal under unforgettable circumstances. That night, we dreamed of the lives waiting for us: where we’d land, the pressures we’d inevitably endure, the temperatures we’d eventually grow accustomed to wherever we’d end up.
But, in that moment, just as in 2013, the only thing to do was to momentarily surrender to the mysterious ways of the ice and snow.
