Marshmallow snow

Last Sunday, I had my first snowfall.

Braving out the cold with only boots and jacket over a bathrobe, I held out my hands as white falls in tidbits around me.

When I was about four of five years old, a boy who was eating marshmallow told me he was eating snow. This neighbor comes from a well-to-do family and has travelled around the world on holidays.

Whether it was his matter-of-fact-face while popping those white stuff in his mouth or my meager knowledge of the world that was the reason, for almost a year there, I lodged this simple lie in my head and believed snow was bite-size and squidgy.

(I mostly had Chippy and Cloud Nine when I was little so don't be surprised why marshmallows didn't make it into our seriously-budgeted household of then three small girls.

Now that I look back on it, this rationing of Chippy and Cloud Nine should be thanked for and be followed as an example in other homes, because it helped me see the beauty of savoring what you have and the discipline to imagine and dream when things get rough.)

As a girl who grew up in the tropics, snow is, of course, mysterious for me.

It was that kind of Christmas in a song that begins with "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." (chestnuts and open fires, now there goes another non-tropical flavor), the street blanket little girls make angels with in movies, and the strange cap in the phrase 'snow-capped mountains' in books.

So when the opportunity came up, T was all eager to give me my morning's surprise - Snow.
Falling. From heaven.

The snow I felt last Sunday was no marshmallow.

It was better and had more jazz to it because it was falling down in an unrehearsed display of softness and was settling on the ground with the promise of diamond glitters under the sun.