Snow in a sealed sky

An original literary non-fiction-style account of choosing a snow globe from a seaside souvenir stall.

My daughter wanted the snow globe with the lighthouse. Through its curved glass, the lighthouse leaned towards a sky full of silver flakes. Outside the stall, the real lighthouse was barely visible beyond the harbour wall. I suggested taking a photograph instead. She said that the photograph would not have snow.

I explained that it did not snow here in the way the globe suggested. She turned it over and waited for the flakes to fall again. The stallholder offered to show us a different one, with a sailing boat inside. My daughter shook her head. The lighthouse was the one she had watched from our window every evening.

I looked at the other souvenirs while she held the globe. Most changed the place somehow. The harbour was bluer on the plates, the houses closer together on the tea towels. I had taken a photograph that morning with a delivery van just outside the frame. I did not mention this when I returned to the counter.

My daughter asked whether the lighthouse keeper would mind the snow. I began to answer about the actual lighthouse, then noticed that she was pointing to a tiny painted doorway inside the globe. I said that we would have to imagine what the person in that doorway thought. She decided that they would be pleased because the snow never blocked the path.

We bought it. At home, she placed it on a shelf where she could reach it. The photograph I had suggested was still on my telephone, waiting to be sorted with the others. Sometimes she turned the globe over and told a visitor about the window from which she had watched the light. The impossible snow had not made her forget the real evenings.

Explain why the narrator becomes willing to buy the snow globe.