Saturday, January 17, 2015

Hidemi’s Rambling No.534

The news told the other day that it snowed unusually heavily in Kyoto where I was born and grew up, and ten inches of snow covered the city. Only ten inches made the news since it snows in Kyoto merely once or twice a year. For that reason, snowing was an exciting lucky event for me when I lived there. White snow covered the old, brownish somber city and made it look a little better. I vividly remember the fun I had as a child when it snowed and covered the ground rarely thick one morning. The front yard of our house turned into a vast white mattress, which was a view I had never seen before. I had a snowball fight with my father who hadn’t been hostile to me yet like he is today. He deliberately took my snowball attacks in his face and yelled repeatedly, “You got me! I surrender!” My younger sister was still a baby and I was able to monopolize the fun and my father for once. My mother usually didn’t allow me to make a racket but snow softened her and she took photographs of our snowball fight. It surely was one of the happiest moments of my childhood. Heavy snow came again when I was a high school student. I was riding the local bus to school with my friend and other students, feeling gloomy as I felt every time I was on my way to school. When the bus arrived at the bus stop near the school, we saw a teacher stand there. As soon as the door of the bus opened, he told us that school was canceled due to snow. The bus I took ran a loop route around Kyoto, which meant it eventually returned to where I got on. My friend and I didn’t even have to get off the bus and went straight back to home. It became a magical ride by snow, with us feeling over the moon and giggling and laughing all the way. I was walking with my partner when the next heavy snow hit Kyoto. Only a few months had passed since we first met and we were just friends then. I was uplifted by snow and caught him a surprise with a snowball. It directly hit his face and I burst into laughter. What I didn’t understand was his look. He was stunned, rather shocked, with his eyes bulged. According to his theory, adults don’t have a snowball fight and I was the first and only one who broke his theory. I just loved snow so much. Now, I live in a town where it snows all day every day during winter and snow mounts up on the ground higher than my height. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night by a sense of claustrophobia. If I had seen my future living like this when I was a child in Kyoto, I would have thought I would move to Alaska or the North Pole, or the earth simply would have the glacial period. Life turns in an unexpected way. People who live in this town greet each other saying unpleasantly “Here it comes again!” when the first snow falls. I still feel joyful for snow, and I guess I haven’t become a local yet while living here for four years now…