The Best Women's Travel Writing, Volume 10 by Lavinia Spalding

Author:Lavinia Spalding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRV010000 Travel / Essays & Travelogues
ISBN: 9781609520915
Publisher: Travelers' Tales
Published: 2014-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

Kate McCahill teaches English in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She uses writing as an excuse to travel, and her projects have taken her to Asia, South America, and, most recently, Hawaii.

SHEBANA COELHO

Snow in Mongolia

Forgetting, she remembered.

When I phone Amaglan in Mongolia, the first thing I want to tell her is that it’s snowing here in the U.S. But I can’t find the words for it. This shocks me. I sit there, holding the phone, watching the snow falling onto a triangle of lawn at my parents’ house in suburban New Jersey. I listen to the cadence of Amaglan speaking in Mongolian, carefully enunciating words as language teachers do, as she did when she taught me.

The snow is falling thick and fast, I want to say. But I can’t.

Instead, I say other things. I say Happy New Year and she says the same; she says it’s freezing cold all over Mongolia, especially in UB. But a few weeks ago, it was warm enough that she got together with some of the other teachers at that place near her house, that café where they have the good tea, do I remember?

Yes, I say. I do.

Really, she laughs, you really remember after all these years, that one café we went to once?

It’s only been five years since I left, I say.

Long enough to forget, she says.

Actually, it’s the opposite, I say. It’s long enough to remember. She hears the defensiveness in my voice. She changes the subject. We continue talking. The snow keeps falling. I mourn those missing words.

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