The day is bright with sun but it’s a cold morning, a 25˚ morning. Icicles hang from the edges of my roof. Snow still lies on the ground but the roads are clear. The weatherman says tomorrow will be a warm day. We might even hit 50˚, but this winter has made a skeptic of me. I don’t trust a warm day. It’s Mother Nature toying with us. She probably giggles when a warm day makes us hopeful knowing that the cold is just biding its time, waiting for its turn. It’s inevitable.
When I was last returning from Ghana, my carry-on was so heavy I couldn’t lift it into the bin. I asked the man beside me, and he was quite happy to help, but he did mention how heavy it was. The reasons were two pottery bowls and a few other breakables I didn’t trust to my checked luggage. The bowls were nothing fancy but are common ones for grinding peppers or ginger.
Souvenirs are tricky. When I was a kid, I tended toward pennants, magnets or plastic gewgaws made in China. Each had the name of the place we were visiting. I remember buying snow globes and plastic dolls dressed in regional costumes. Quality wasn’t an issue for me.
From the beach I brought home colorful shells and dead starfish. The shells stayed around a while, but the dead starfish would start to smell, and my mother would make me throw them away. The round nautilus type shells were always my favorite.
When I was in Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, I bought cloth and had it made into dresses which I wore every day. They weren’t really souvenirs. I sent home as gifts wooden animals, heads and giraffes. Ghana didn’t have any giraffes. I bought leather bags and woven baskets, but I used them. One basket became a lamp shade. When I was leaving Ghana, I bought a whole collection of the African Writers’ Series, a fugu (smock), some cloth and not one gewgaw. I would have bought a snow globe but it would have been weird to find one in Ghana.
No matter where I have traveled, I’ve bought souvenirs. Among them are a pottery tea set from England, platters and dishes from Portugal, wooden figures from Russia, cloth from Ghana, a tagine from Morocco, curtains from Dublin and a tablecloth from Hungary.
I didn’t think about it when I was buying everything, but in retrospect it seems as I had grown-up so had my souvenirs.
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