A Christmas Eve Memory
Ardain Isma
On a Christmas Eve afternoon near Saint-Louis, on Haiti’s northern coast, they met on the bank of La Rivière des Barres, close to where its waters flushed into the Caribbean. He wore khaki trousers rolled to his knees. His brown shirt was unbuttoned, floating on the breeze like the wings of a colibri—the Haitian songbird—as if ready to lift skyward.
She stood in a bikini, her slender legs lustrous and cinnamon, one foot arched gracefully as she held a hand fan—as though the tropical air alone could not provide the comfort young lovers sought on romantic strolls along the beach of L’Ester Déré, just meters from the river’s mouth.
They exchanged a swift, sharp “hi”—the kind shared by long-parted friends.
“You’re Armelle,” he said, his tone inviting and warm.
“Bien sûr,” she replied. Of course. “And you?” Her voice mirrored that same inviting flare.
“Henri,” he answered simply.
And like two souls keeping a rendezvous with nature—where the flame of love always flickers—they stepped into that flame, unknowingly.
A December afternoon in the tropics always resembles a late summer morning in Northeast Florida, where they live now. Married, with two children in university, they point to their family as proof of a love built on golden sand, reminiscent of L’Ester Déré near the delta—but this foundation has been crystallized by devotion, hardened by commitment.
Life has not always been gentle to them, as it hasn’t for so many. In uncertainty, they have sometimes bent beneath the weight, but their love held. It is too profound, rooted in the finest fibers of their souls, to be swept away by circumstance.
Every Christmas Day, as they gather around a table lavish with Haitian gastronomy, the story of that first encounter is the first tale told—like the refrain of a love song no one tires of hearing.
Henri begins, and Armelle finishes. Sometimes a word is missed, memory shifting subtly with time. Their children, who remember the exact phrasing from their teen years, gently interject to correct. Henri refuses the edit. The table laughs. Perhaps it is an acknowledgment that, even with a word out of place, they cherish the telling as much as they did the first time—a silent understanding that the season Henri and Armelle became will never truly change.
Also see: When Love Took Its Time: A Letter, a Walk, a Lifetime
Note: Ardain Isma is a university professor, novelist, essayist, and scholar. He serves as Chief Editor of CSMS Magazine and leads Village Care Publishing, an indie press dedicated to multicultural and social-justice-oriented literature. His works include Midnight at Noon, Bittersweet Memories of Last Spring, Last Spring was Bittersweet and The Cry of a Lone Bird – his latest novel which explores resilience, love, and the enduring quest for human dignity.
