Ice melts... when you let it.

 

I think of some of the frozen feelings that kept me from moving in a warmer direction. There were times I could not break free to throw my arms around the person in front of me who was pelting me with pointy words. It is funny but there is actually more danger from hurled objects when you are retreating than when you are close enough to feel his or her breath on your cheek.

 

Some of those chances to melt are gone. The person left my life, or the situation shifted, unresolved. They remain like the icebergs at the polar cap... where nothing can survive for very long.

 

But some of those circumstances swivel on the axis of my earth's rotation, and I get to blow more temperate words. 

 

"I need help. You are the only one I can turn to." It was true, and without hesitation she made room in her hectic life for me. We wasted no words on past resentments. 

 

"Where do I show up and when?" I can never repay her. How could ice ever find purchase again? 

 

Your marriage may have weathered a few winters. What can you learn from past blizzards? I know the loneliness and isolation are as perilous as the frost. Yes sometimes it is of my own choosing. I walk around like Pig Pen in the Snoopy cartoon, who had his own dust storm. I carry my arctic winds with me, blustering John away.

 

Sometimes there are Divine interventions. Once I was my own personal marital iceberg driving Benjamin to school, and I got a flat tire. Pow. I can almost picture God's hand holding the pin. I was jolted out of my tirade, and sheepishly called John. He came immediately, of course, sending me in his warm car on to school while he wrestled with the spare on a cold curb. Why was it I wanted to cling to icy feelings? Seemed pretty pointless, as I glanced at him gratefully in my rear view mirror.

 

It is hard to hold on to ice for any length of time. The way it draws heat from your body is silent, insidious, fatal. Nothing can survive for very long.