I came from a place where the coldest it ever got was what you'd call a cool evening. When I arrived in Canada in November, I did not own a proper coat. I thought I owned a coat. I did not.
The first morning I walked outside and the air hit my face, I genuinely did not understand what was happening to my body. I thought something was wrong with me. I stood on the sidewalk outside the house where I was staying and I could not move. Not because of the cold, exactly, but because I had no framework for it.
A woman walking her dog stopped and looked at me. She said something I didn't catch, then went inside her house and came out with a scarf. She wrapped it around my neck without asking, patted my arm, and walked away.
I wore that scarf every day for three years. I still have it. I have never been able to find her again to give it back, or to explain what that moment meant to a person who had just arrived somewhere enormous and frightening and didn't yet know a single thing about how to survive it.