november.

When I was a little girl I lived in Barbados, and I love how that tiny island and the people I knew there are apart of the person I am today.

Because of my three years and some change there, I like to drink English Breakfast tea with milk and sugar in the afternoons.  I have to catch myself before I spell color c-o-l-o-u-r and recognize r-e-c-o-g-n-i-s-e.  I can give thanks that I’ve survived an attack by two Portuguese Man-of-War.  I’ve read almost every Enid Blyton book ever written.  My soul shrivels up in cold, grey winters, and I only wear close-toed shoes when I absolutely have to.  I know what it’s like to count as family people with different accents and skin colors than mine.

When I was growing up, in the years after we left, I felt conflicted about my memory of Barbados.  Mostly I was conflicted because, with everything in me, I just wanted to be living there still, and that was something no-one around me (outside my family) seemed to understand.  When I went back for the first time at age eighteen, I cried for the first several weeks of my four-month stay.  I cried because, all those years ago, we’d had to leave suddenly, with no time for good-byes to my school and to many of my friends, and the hurt and shock were so bad it felt like losing a limb.  And I cried because going back felt like going home.

But now I am even older and my memory is mostly just happy.  I love that I am still friends with some of the people I considered family all those years ago.  I love that, even at six years old, my child-eyes were opened wide to another world.  And I love how that other world made its indelible mark on me, a mark that has something to do with why I live overseas today.

So now I am in South Asia and I’m watching my own kids and I’m wondering, What kind of imprint will this loud, bright, lively country leave on them?  What things will they point to when they’re twenty-nine and say, “I’m like this because I lived there.”

I thought of all of this today when Judah and Amelie emerged bleary-eyed from their bedroom at 7 a.m. and declared, “I’m cold!”  Cold?  It’s sixty-eight degrees today.  These are the kids who wore shorts to the playground last November while their South Asian friends wore fleeces and ear muffs (I’m not joking).  South Asians think any temperature under seventy degrees is freezing.  By December, when we reach our low of 65, you’ll see people in hats and gloves and wool face masks.

So this morning, while their dad and I wore t’shirts, our kids bundled up in socks and jackets.

It’s already starting.  And I love it.