It always amazes me how we humans can regard the same thing from such different viewpoints. Some of us marvel at things that others may disregard. Some of us find beauty in a setting that others find bland. Some of us squeal with delight at things that others groan about in exasperation.
A case in point is snow — that white stuff that mesmerises some of us when it first falls, but later irritates us when it sticks around for too long.
As a child, I loved snow. As an adult, I was far less charitable. Trying to negotiate a snowy Malahat Highway on my daily commute between Nanaimo and Victoria was not my idea of fun. Neither was dodging snowballs, as my head always seemed to be on the receiving end of them.
Winter tires never stopped my poor little Micra from sliding into ditches. Then there was the inevitable digging out of driveways. For me, the arrival of snow usually meant stress, irritation, and inconvenience.
However, for people raised in desert or sub-tropical environments, snow is something magical — something that seems to set free their inner child. It’s a curious, and somewhat endearing, phenomenon to observe.
One such instance occurred in Jordan.
One day, as my boss and I were heading back to Amman from Aqaba, I began waxing lyrical about the beautiful red rock faces along the way. They were especially vibrant that day because the sun was shining directly upon them. That led me, as usual, into raptures about deserts in general.
On that particular day, as I was extolling the beauty of deserts, my boss took a long, slow drag on her cigarette, coughed vigorously, and then wondered aloud — as if pondering one of life’s great mysteries — why on earth I was so smitten with deserts. “They’re only grains of sand,” she mused.
Some months later, winter arrived in Amman. We were in our makeshift classroom when, all of a sudden, chairs were pushed aside and near chaos erupted. Excited chatter in Arabic immediately filled the air. Students were digging out their cellphones and pointing them towards the windows.
My God! What’s happened? Has there been an accident?
The lesson plan for the morning instantly became a non-starter. Students raced out of the classroom and into the main office to join our boss, who herself was rushing towards the windows. Still, I couldn’t understand what was going on. Cellphone cameras were going into overdrive.
I looked out the window and saw only a sleety, grey day. I simply couldn’t see what everyone else was seeing. Then my boss said excitedly, “It’s snow! Look at the snowflakes!”
What?! That is snow? It took me ten minutes to stop laughing.
Recalling her earlier astonishment at my love of deserts, I asked her why she was so smitten with snowflakes. Chuckling, I couldn’t resist adding, “They’re only flakes of frozen water!”
She looked at me in utter amazement, as though I hadn’t quite grasped the significance of this momentous event.
As I observed this collective excitement about snow in Amman, I was suddenly transported back a decade or so to another moment of snow-filled wonder. Once again, I couldn’t help but smile.
I was remembering my Thai roommate, Duri. We shared a room in rickety old Dormitory 3 on a university campus in Beijing.
Winters in Beijing were bitterly cold, and cutting winds made a bad situation even worse. However, once the snow fell, there was sheer glee — not for me, but for Duri.
This 48-year-old woman was suddenly transformed into an excited eight-year-old, shrieking, “Look, Jos! Look at the snow! Look!”
Gone were any concerns about our freezing room, our allocation of only two sheets per bed and no blankets, the diagonal crack in our window, or the nearby front door that remained perpetually open. Snow had arrived!
Duri’s outbursts of joy were usually followed by endless pleas for me to take photos of her frolicking in the snow. One day it would be Duri in a red jacket; the next day, Duri in a purple jacket. According to her, these colours emphasised the snow better.
These photo opportunities had to be followed by various shots of Duri’s snow-laden bike — a bike that was completely frozen to the rack. Then came Duri’s fist clasping a ball of snow; Duri with a cap; Duri without a cap
There were hundreds of different poses, but always the star of the shot was the snow. She frequently reminded me that Thailand, her home country, never gets snow.
These antics always made me laugh. Snow was something I had always taken for granted — as a child, with excitement; as an adult, with annoyance.
Watching the sheer delight on Duri’s face as she “experienced” snow gave me a new appreciation for something I, as a British Columbian, had viewed almost entirely as negative. A chink in my snow-aversion armour had appeared, and I felt a strange surge of pride. No matter your age, may you always carry the eight-year-old within — the one who can marvel at a snowflake, delight in a desert, and find wonder in the world no matter how ordinary it may seem.
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