I didn’t understand winter
until I was sitting
at the dining table
inside my heated house.
I was talking with a man,
and he spoke of winter
with a solemnity
that made me realise
the people here
are inherently different
for the respecting the cold
for so long.
Later, I mentioned the winter gloves
I was just not getting around to buying,
and a woman looked up at me,
the amusement in her eyes from a moment ago
replaced by alarm.
That is what winter is:
They barely knew me,
a stranger at the dining table,
but they knew the cold,
and decades
of carefully putting on layers,
of frost-bitten fingertips
had them
carefully describing
how to respect the cold.
I do believe I am seeing the other side of my first Canadian winter. There were times when I thought When will this end? and there have been moments that made me stand still and marvel at the flurries and snow-heaped pavements. I have exclaimed I don’t understand why anyone still lives here! and been entranced by the dedication the city has to live through the snow.
I never thought I would be someone who would be moved much by the weather, but I laugh at how often the snow astounds me. Nearly two decades under South African sun and shivering at the thought of eight degrees in the dead of winter quickly matured into being grateful it was negative five degrees outside with no windchill as opposed to the bite of negative-twenty-degree air topped with a snowstorm. The above is a little poem about the experience.