Winter and Camellias

As a child in the heart of the Romanian winter, I used to wear three layers of socks and shirts, two pairs of pants, gloves and a hat. Snow was sometimes taller than my father’s car and squeakier than a rusty bike wheel. One time I had to abandon a glove that got stuck on the metal door handle of the school. New York winters were drier but louder, with the wind’s strength and voice growing stronger at every block. Yet, when I moved another 3000 miles away, I had to adapt the way I alluded to cold. In New York cold gave me icicles of nose drip and in Los Angeles I never took the winter coat out of storage. Similar to LA, Melbourne gave me the gift of mild winter temperatures. Gloves and winter coat are still in the box I packed in New York. And like in LA, the best winter present I got are the camellias, the evergreen trees that belong to the Asian family who generously gave us the tea, too. Camellias grow happily in Melbourne, and when they bloom, they turn it into a giant Descanso Gardens, the place in Californian where I discovered them for the first time.