The Goddess Speaks
The Goddess Speaks
It’s hard to be
a goddess with
a frozen noseI'm still getting used to the cold weather in New York. Through Jan. 27, I have survived 12 relentless days of below-freezing temperatures going as low as 7 degrees. The normal islander probably doesn't know what below freezing and above freezing means unless they work in industries that involve freezing things.
It's not that I didn't know about freezing -- I made my fair share of ice cakes when I was in elementary school -- I just never imagined I would be in the freezer. The freezing point of water is 32 degree Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius. All New Yorkers know this -- even the 5-year-olds.
I remember seeing New York tourists when I was still living in Hawaii. They were always getting sunburned because they didn't realize what the blazing sun could do. They also didn't have a clue about currents and undertows when jumping into the ocean. Now I am the one having to learn things people here consider common knowledge.
When I first moved here, I watched and observed the New Yorkers around me to learn all the things they knew from growing up in this kind of weather. I learned how to tie my scarf so that I can bring it up to cover my face when a cold gust of below-zero wind comes at me. I learned to stuff my scarf in the armhole on the inside of my coat when I hang it up to avoid losing it. After losing one half of five pairs of gloves, I have learned to diligently stuff my gloves in my coat pockets as soon as I am in a building.
I want to add that I lost those gloves even though considerate strangers handed me my dropped gloves on several occasions. What can I say? This is a lot of stuff to wear and hang on to when you grew up in slippers, T-shirt and shorts.
ALTHOUGH I'M GETTING the hang of dealing with cold whether, I did not by any means go through this 12-day ordeal of bitter cold gracefully.
There were people here who wore their long coats, woolly scarves and leather gloves, handsomely strolling through the below-freezing streets as if this was normal. I passed them with a pure expression of misery on my face, trying to get indoors as soon as possible.
Once indoors, the static electricity would always make my long black hair cling to my face so that I resembled Cousin It from the Addams Family. I won't even describe the state of my nose. No, graceful like a goddess I was not, but I made it! Score one for the Hawaiians.
Kathryn Kekona, who grew up in Ewa Beach, is an independent video producer at Clear Blue Productions in New York and the only one in her family to stray from the islands.
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