Kenko

1

I live in a country where people crave for snow. Some, during the hottest days of the country, silently pray for it, if not for rain. Every Christmas, children would scrape styrofoam to invent a drizzle of snow. Whenever people would go abroad, those who stay behind would jokingly say, “Hey, send us a jar of snow!” For many, seeing and touching snow has become a lifelong dream. I’m not one of them, but I’m not a pessimist.

When I was a kid, I don’t know exactly when in my childhood, I remember hearing an unfamiliar sound of too heavy raindrops on our roof. We knew it wasn’t mere rain, there was something else – like coins or marbles being thrown on our roof by drunkards or children who were passing by. The noise continued, and it bothered me. Curious, I went out to the street and saw people cupping their hands in mid-air, as if to catch something precious from the sky. Looking up, I observed very small, round objects bouncing on the roofs of houses. And I realized, the very small, round objects were everywhere, bouncing heavily at first, then just silently rest: on the street, in the gutter, on heads, on hats, in the folds of one’s shirt, a child even collected a number of it by holding an inverted umbrella. I picked one from the ground, and felt it melt in my palm. It was ice.

It wasn’t even snow, but somehow, it suffices.