I am cold.
This
is in spite of the fact that I have a quilt on my lap, I am wearing
fuzzy slippers and a turtle neck sweater and, I will admit, my coat.
The state of coldness seems permanent. Yet the status quo comes into
question when I look at the photos of our family at the shore last
summer. It feels incredulous to see us so skimpily clad... thin beach
wraps, tank tops, shorts, bathing suits. I shiver to look. But in the
attic of my mind I remember that I once was warm enough to dress this
way, thinking little of it. Now it seems like those sweltering days
have disappeared for good.
I am half a century old, old enough to have
watched the seasons take their reliable turns, though they have been
known to tickle the edges of their appointed time with unexpected
blasts in April, or balmy afternoons in November. Surely my memory is
proof enough that days of swimming and ice cream cones are in my
future.
But I wonder.
I just got this month's heating bill
which is roughly equivalent to the price of our first car. It is thrice
the fee we paid the midwife who caught our firstborn son.
Yet even
though I keep the thermostat at an unbelievably terrific golf score, it
costs to keep our family in an environment that does not induce
hypothermia in January.
Once I was in a surly mood while driving
when the cd of music John and I composed in our balmier days came on. The song was buoyant with idealism, popping
with phrases like "Love opens the way" and "their love never sleeping."
It clashed however with the emotions that demanded center stage of my
heart right then. Love was not exactly opening the way in the feisty
conversation, make that diatribe, that hovered just below the surface
in my internal courtroom where my husband was being prosecuted for major transgressions involving trash, dishes
and video games. Still the voice was mine, and I could remember, just
barely, that I had at one time long ago felt that way. It was whittling
away at the attorney's case, somehow.
I have walked into people's
homes and seen beautifully framed photographs of them on their wedding
day. The smiles are always genuine, the entwined arms a reflection of
what was as real as it gets. Yet sometimes those same people are not
currently smiling, or touching. Still having the visual reminder that
we used to feel warm enough to let our bodies and hearts be vulnerable
enough to wear tank tops and silly grins, can help defrost the
sentiments that keep us apart.
It can cost to keep our marriages
warm in the inevitable winters. Swallowing your clever and two edged
words just before you speak them to the person you want to hurt... has
a price. Picking up after someone who has again forgotten where you
keep the dishwasher can take a toll. But sometimes, when you had
stopped believing, the wind changes and you are laughing at a shared
joke, hip checking in the kitchen, and noticing that the sun does come
back after all.
