{"id":152,"date":"2013-11-21T07:21:04","date_gmt":"2013-11-21T12:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturallycaribbean.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2014-04-17T11:33:48","modified_gmt":"2014-04-17T15:33:48","slug":"snow-and-sand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.culturallycaribbean.com\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"Snow and Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Snow<\/a>Little L\u00a0woke up\u00a0one\u00a0morning last week and asked if it was winter yet.\u00a0The excitement in her voice was unmistakable and it took\u00a0me back to\u00a0a time when, as a child,\u00a0I was fascinated by the idea\u00a0of\u00a0snow.\u00a0After all,\u00a0those children in foreign Christmas shows\u00a0got to stick\u00a0out their tongues to catch delicate flakes,\u00a0could skate on ice, and make big, round snowmen with carrots for noses.\u00a0The white\u00a0drifts\u00a0looked so crisp, clean (and yes, yummy) and I could see myself stomping through, making deep tracks as I crunched along.<\/p>\n

Every December, without fail, I would ask my parents if we’d be getting snow, and\u00a0each year they would patiently explain that\u00a0we lived\u00a0too close to the Equator and that our\u00a0country’s hills were not tall enough for snow to be a reality.\u00a0Not satisfied, I would mention the\u00a0hail\u00a0that had supposedly fallen in the southern part of the island at some unverified point in time.\u00a0Surely, snow\u00a0couldn’t be\u00a0too\u00a0much of\u00a0a stretch!\u00a0My obsession persisted\u00a0until, one year,\u00a0my mother encouraged me to consider my wish\u00a0carefully.\u00a0Had I\u00a0thought about\u00a0the homeless and how the low temperatures would worsen their circumstances?\u00a0Did I realize that\u00a0houses\u00a0on our island were not built to keep out the cold, but to let in the breeze? Needless to say, the ensuing visions of\u00a0shivering, barefooted vagrants, and of biting wind blowing though our home were sufficient to make me\u00a0relinquish\u00a0my\u00a0obsession of seeing snow in Trinidad.<\/p>\n

It was not\u00a0until I went away to college,\u00a0however, and lived through my first\u00a0seven months of cold\u00a0that I was able to\u00a0fully appreciate the other side of that chilly coin. There was a lot to this thing called winter, and\u00a0sledding and snowmen were\u00a0merely the tip of the iceberg. Pun (albeit a bad one)intended. First of all, I was not accustomed to wearing so much clothing. For someone whose year-round informal attire\u00a0consisted chiefly of\u00a0tank tops and sandals, it was a genuine annoyance to\u00a0not only put on so many layers, but to have to\u00a0peel them off every time I got to a\u00a0classroom, cafeteria or\u00a0dorm.\u00a0Every day.\u00a0For more than half the year. Secondly, I quickly learned to tread carefully. Literally. It seemed like there was always an icy\u00a0patch of\u00a0pavement or a slick step\u00a0ready\u00a0to\u00a0mess with\u00a0the inattentive. And although the campus was indeed beautiful beneath a fresh layer of\u00a0snow,\u00a0those bright white powdery mounds\u00a0along the curbs\u00a0eventually\u00a0morphed into grey-brown slush. Slush that I would at times wish was sand between my toes.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that I was\u00a0miserable during those winter months.\u00a0Far from it. I learned to adapt like anyone else,\u00a0would\u00a0smile at the sight of\u00a0flakes as they wafted down, and\u00a0had fun\u00a0making snow people\u00a0and throwing snow balls. But the season also made me think even more about\u00a0life on my island two thousand miles away,\u00a0where there are only two\u00a0seasons:\u00a0rainy and dry. Where the trees\u00a0keep their leaves all year long and\u00a0the weather is always good for\u00a0shorts and sleeveless shirts. Where every day has the potential of\u00a0being a beach day.<\/p>\n

For the most part,\u00a0winters are relatively mild where I live now.\u00a0It is November and although there hasn’t even been so much as a flurry yet,\u00a0Little L is already making plans for snow men and angels.\u00a0The cold\u00a0still feels foreign to me, despite all this time away,\u00a0but I\u00a0appreciate that it will be part of the\u00a0natural order of things for my children.\u00a0Spring, summer, autumn and then winter.\u00a0A different normal for them.\u00a0I can’t help but ask myself\u00a0if, perhaps,\u00a0Little L and Littler B will\u00a0have the same sense of wonder for\u00a0warm beaches, the sea and sand as I\u00a0had for\u00a0snow.<\/p>\n

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