For my parents, they only knew what winter was once they
arrived In Canada.
My dad’s first day in Canada was in the middle of winter.
Coats, boots, mittens, hats, gloves: they were unfamiliar pieces of clothing to
him. His family and he did not know what extreme cold was. The volunteer
Olivette who welcomed my dad’s family to Shawinigan (3h away from Montreal),
keeps telling me that my uncles walked from one apartment to the next in
sandals in the middle of winter. Once they got accustomed to the weather, the
appropriate statement is:
For the generations born in Canada and for the
long-immigrated established people: You have only experienced winter once
you’ve shoveled snow.
When my dad is on a trip, I am the manly man of the house
shoveling the snow out of our driveway, even though my mom, my brother and I
never use the car. I shovel the snow as soon as possible because as time goes on, it gets more compact, sometimes saturated with water, sometimes has a layer of ice underneath the snow. And since I’m the one shoveling, shoveling dense snow is not one of my greatest joys.
As a kid, dense snow was the best. It was useful to make
snowballs and whip them at each other (even though we weren’t allowed), to make
snowmen, igloos, mini mountains of snow to slide down. It is also the prettiest
snowfall because since it is so dense, the snow falls down in big flakes as
opposed to powdery snow which whips at my face at the slightest wind. However,
dense snow is the hardest to shovel. Yesterday, compact snow fell on Montreal.
I was too lazy to shovel, told myself I’d do it today. Today, I
realized it was a bad idea to let it go yesterday because dense snow holds a
lot of water. Overnight, that water drained from the snow to the bottom layer,
making it a lot harder to shovel water-saturated particles.
It’s okay, I can do this! LIKE A MAN!
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