When the sound of the gusting wind woke me up at 1 am this morning, I sat up in bed. I couldn’t sleep anymore; the noise was intolerable, like the constant sound of waves hitting a beach. On and on, with no end in sight. My memory traveled back to when we visited a small boutique hotel on the waterfront of Curaçao, where I heard the same rhythm, except now I was in my own flat, 14 stories above sea level.
I looked outside the window, hoping for something interesting. Farsta train station shone brightly. A train left the platform, illuminating its surroundings briefly with the warm, soft, fluorescent light of its windows. As it faded in the distance, dullness returned: an empty car park, empty roads, and dark apartment blocks. Everyone was asleep except me.
I wished it would snow, like last week. The snow didn’t stay, but I was hooked for hours by the window watching the beautiful snow flakes as they fell, as they melted away to nothingness when they touched the road. In May when we moved in, the sales brochure had painted a tantalising picture of how the scenery would look like in winter. The trees were all white, filling up spaces where the roads were absent. On the horizon, there were two gleaming frozen lakes, inviting me to visit. A lovely backdrop that we had fallen in love with.
I have never missed a Christmas in Sweden. Every Christmas for the last three years, I have chosen to be in Stockholm, but every year I have never received a white Christmas. I hate January and February for their abundance of snow, because snow should only appear in December. As a former southern hemisphere inhabitant from Australia, that was what we were missing with our Christmas, we were told. We had the delicious ham, the hearty roast and the bountiful presents, but the Europeans told us, “it’s never the same, because it’s not a white Christmas”. Bloody hell, I am in one of the coldest countries on earth but where is my white Christmas?
The morning came and I walked out of my apartment. The path I usually walked on had turned into a slippery slope, buried deep in snow. I called out for Min’an to take a look, and soon after he came with a red snow sleigh. Very unlike him, I thought. He never fancied the white stuff. Nevertheless we rode the sleigh on the slope, woo hoo! It was only for a short time but it felt satisfyingly triumphant when we reached the bottom. I had not done that in my life ever, I thought.
And I was right – I still had not done that yet in my life. Because it was just a dream. I woke up and sat up in bed again, this time at 3.36 am, just about two hours later. The wind was still howling like wolves. I slumped back to bed, struggling to sleep with all my might.
Would you snow please, Stockholm?