Baby it’s Cold Outside…and Everywhere Else!

I’m always cold except for maybe between July 1^st and the middle of August. This morning I woke up to sub-zero temperatures that have only climbed to minus five in the two hours I’ve been sucking up coffee and zipping around the internet. I have my fingerless gloves on with L.L. Bean hand warmers tucked inside. My house is making noises I don’t usually hear and I don’t blame it. The furnace can’t keep up, but I never touch my thermostat; it stays at 70 but I’ve been known to wear as many as four layers of clothing including silk long-underwear. I did find a place, last week, where I was as warm as I wanted to be. I have a niece-in-law with MS who lives in an assisted living facility who I went to visit on her 51th birthday. I was there an hour and a half and left because I was afraid if I got any more comfortable, I’d want to book a room and stay until spring.

Before her mother passed away, this niece and her mother lived in the same facility for a short time and my sister-in-law had a black roommate. One day her other daughter came rushing into her sister’s room and said, “You’ve got to talk to Mom! She’s calling her roommate her ‘chocolate chip cookie.’” “Don’t worry about it,” came the reply, “her roommate calls Mom her ‘white cupcake’---they’re friends.” I miss my sister-in-law. She was such a dingbat. In the fifty plus years that I knew her she was always saying outrageous things and starting fights among her kids. She could leave me laughing, she could leave me speechless or shaking my head at her wacky way of looking at life but she was never boring. Her pet name for me was “Mother Theresa” because, she said, I always took the high road. I had to around her. She was such a prolific gossip that I knew my every word would get repeated to someone if I didn’t. It’s funny what we remember the most about others who’ve passed on. I remember her for her great cooking and how much it delighted her that I never shined in that department, but for some reason I keep forgetting that she also took in kids and babies that social services had to place in a hurry, sometimes in the middle of the night---26 or 27 cases---while she was raising her own five. It’s important to balance the good in a person when saying anything negative.

Writing that last line reminded of a movie quote from New Year’s Eve, it’s one of my favorite quotes and favorite films. “Sometimes it feels like there are so many things in this world we can't control. Earthquakes, floods, reality shows... But it's important to remember the things that we can. Like forgiveness, second chances, fresh starts... Because the one thing that turns the world from the longing place to a beautiful place... is love. Love and any of its forms. Love gives us hope...” As exasperating as my sister-in-law could be at times with her gossiping and stirring the pot, she never let an opportunity go by without delivering warm meals or groceries to the door of anyone in need. It was also rare to see her without a crochet project in her hands. She made baby layettes for friends, family, acquaintances, several charities and her church's craft sales.

Last Monday was supposed to be one of my Gathering Girls bi-monthly, standing brunch dates but we canceled it because the weather was predicted to be way too cold for man or beast to be outside. The ice we got earlier didn’t have a chance to melt and is still under a layer of snow. Between lung issues and fragile bones it was prudent to cancel, but that doesn’t mean I had to like it. I haven’t been any place in what feels like a month of Mondays. The only voices I hear are coming from the TV and---surprise, surprise---I’ve even been waiting until noon to turn it on. A couple of times I’ve tried singing or talking out loud just to make sure I could still do it, but the dog gets upset and/or confused. He rules my life, so I shut back up.

So what have I been doing to keep my brains from setting up like lime Jell-O?  January has turned me into a regular little Susie Homemaker. I’ve been deep cleaning closets, cabinets and chest-of-drawers in my master bedroom suite. After my cleaner comes on her first Friday of the month, I’m calling a couple of painters to get estimates on step one in my redecorating project. I’ve also spent some time working on a portrait, baking scones, making soup and shredding papers. I hate that latter job, but tax time is coming to America…assuming we’ll still have a country by April 15^th to pay my fair share towards the costs of running it. And that last thought explains why this news junkie has been taking a respite from consuming any more than two hours of news updates a day. My news respites in the Era of Trump never lasts longer than a few weeks before something sucks me back in. ©

Cold, Sleepless Nights and Meandering Thoughts

Decades ago I read a poem that described the cold as the kind that makes your foot steps on snow squeak like Cracker Jack. If I had known how many times over the years I’d think about that metaphor I would have done my best to remember the poem’s name and its author. It’s squeaky cold here in Michigan right now. The single digit temperatures on Thursday fell to thirteen below overnight which tied the record for our lowest temperature. The wind chill was thirty below.  By Friday at 9:00 AM it had warmed up to two below and they closed the schools. It was supposed to climb to nine by noon but still, that was cold enough to make me bow out of going to my Movie and Lunch Club. I suppose if the movie picked had been more compelling than Kevin Costner’s Black and White and the restaurant something other than Mediterranean cuisine I might have braved the cold, but I was happy to forgo them both to sit in my warm La-Z-Boy knitting on my latest baby sweater. 

We have such great materials, now, for outerwear to keep us warmer than when I was a kid. Six or seven years ago I got so tired of being cold I lost my head and bought a knee length parka from L.L. Bean that is rated for 45 below zero weather. It’s made of Gore-Tex and goose down and it has one of the fo-fur trimmed, insulated hoods that looks like a periscope on a submarine. And it’s so heavy that I’d have to take up body-building just to wear it. It’s totally impractical for my current lifestyle so it hangs in the closet, but I keep it in case I ever find myself living out of a shopping cart. Old fears die hard and come, in part, from living years with a preexisting, Mickey Mouse condition that made health insurance ungodly expensive.

When I was a kid I remember going to the doctor’s office with my mom and at the end of the visit the doctor picked up her coat to help her put it on and he said, “No wonder you’re tired! I would be too if I wore this coat around!” Mind you this was over six decades ago so wearing a full length seal skin coat back then didn’t have the same animal rights implications as it would now. Still, it was a beautiful, a-line coat that could be worn over the kind of dresses the required petticoats under neat. When she wore it, I used to love leaning against her when we’d ride the city bus. It was so soothing to pet. I had that coat up until I had to downsize it out of my life after Don’s stroke in May of 2000. Strokes suck. They make you do a lot things large and small that leaves you sad and angry before acceptance settles in, much like what happens in a widow’s world. But that was then and this is now, and now when I sit and knit the memories have plenty of time to meander through my mind.

Last night I went to sleep at midnight and woke by four because I had to pee but I was so warm in my little nest of blankets and pillows that I put it off as long as I could and in the process I woke myself thoroughly up so that I couldn’t fall back to sleep. As I lay there I couldn’t help thinking about how cold and depressing it would be to be living on the streets. I don’t understand how people can endure the physical hardships of living outside in an urban jungle of picking through dumpsters, sleeping over steam grids and depending on the missions for a hot cup of coffee and a sandwich. From what I’ve read the vast majority of the nearly 800 homeless people in my town are mentally ill and/or alcoholics and/or veterans. 

Then there are the ‘tent cities’ that are comprised of a different class of homeless people, refugees from a bad economy or bad choices or a combination of the two. Throw in a few catastrophic health issues that drain all of a person’s assets and keeps them out of the workforce it’s easy to see the homeless world is full of hard luck stories. Stories that few of us sitting in our nice, warm houses want to hear. We could never be like them, we tell ourselves because it makes us feel better to believe that. Hanging around the stroke support communities like I did when Don was alive, I know better now. It can happen to ordinary people, people who thought they had planned well for the future. You might say that I occasionally suffer from a kind of guilt accumulated from living a relatively charmed life with no obstacles I couldn’t overcome or come to accept. And the phrase, “By the grace of God it could be you or me” is never far from my thoughts on cold, sleepless nights. ©

I still have to sew on the buttons on and press it, but here's my latest baby sweater.