JoelNothman.com

December 1. First day of a new season, at least by Australian accounts. And certainly too by the accounts of Montreal weather. It has hardly snowed since the day when I reported it, and I’ve been repeatedly admonished for calling that snow in the first place.

We’ve been going through fairly moderate November weather, a couple of weeks hovering at nearly 15 (while Australia went through a strange cold period of the same temperatures that featured simultaneous bushfire and snow at the Blue Mountains, I hear), and the last few mostly staying above zero. Today, to start a new month, everything decidedly turned icy. I hear that apart from the unbearable coldest of the cold in February, this is the worst. Neither is it rain, nor is it yet the soft, fun snow. It’s just small balls of hail pattering down throughout the morning, icicles growing on the cars, the footpath coated in white patches of ice, and the smoother, sneakier see-through variant.

So it was, on my return from the library (where I was busy racking Nahum Sarna’s brain via his commentary on Genesis), that I crossed Peel Street and watched as the girl who crossed before me slipped onto the support of a knee and a hand. I landed on the far footpath and gave her a concerned and caring look, while discovering that I, too, did not have a good foothold. My feet slipped. I felt I might fall. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do. A tree a couple of metres in front of me was an enticing option; it was also surrounded by a small garden bed of ice.

Just as my food slid into a more-or-less supported position using the cracks between pavement tiles, the girl who had now got up and made her way into the stream of water through the gutter, calling to me, “it’s easier to walk on the road”. For no apparrent reason, I persisted with the footpath, and did attempt grabbing that tree, and found to my surprise that it felt like ice and not at all like wood.

I did make it up the hill, and around the corner onto Docteur Penfield, where it was flatter. “We don’t have a winter like this in Sydney,” I informed the girl who sounded like she had an English accent. “It’s not like this in Kenya, either. And this is just the beginning.” “No,” I replied, “I hear the snow is much nicer.”

I got back to Hillel (I had to move to the road when I found the downhill; I was just sliding down the path) soon afterward. It’s when you enter the heated building and everything but your hands warm up that you realise it might actually have been a good idea to wear gloves (there was actually a pair in my coat pocket).

“יש לך משהו חם בשבילי?” (”Do you have anything hot for me?”) I call out to Yoel, the chef, as I come in. He serves me a soup. I seat myself opposite Emmanuel and soon enough my hands are pliable again. I should probably go put some moisturiser on, though, if I want to stay on Nanna’s good side.