#2

It’s the first week of December now.  We’ve finally succumbed over Thanksgiving to turning on the heat, and still we, the adults of the house, were cold, so we had to turn it up again over the weekend.  Every year, while I swelter as the thermometer hovers around 115°, I pray for the cool weather, but this year, now that it’s arrived, I’m having a harder time acclimating.  When January temps in my hometown rose above 50°, folks went outside in their t-shirts, because it was a heat wave compared to the below-zero wind chills they’d faced through the holidays.  But 50° here is a good 50-60 degrees lower than what we faced just a few months ago, and so it is with relish that I open my winter closet and sift through sweaters, sweatshirts, scarves and gloves, and start cladding myself in layers that I can shed as the winter sun warms the house and car throughout the day.  This wrapping and unwrapping, this daily shift from cold to warm and back again, the welcoming of the sun, finally, after months of ruing it, the rediscovery of favorite clothes that cloak me from the wind while I watch the children, still shoeless, play carefree in the yard, it’s a blessing.