It’s cold outside, boys and girls.
C-c-c-old.
Just when I was getting used to the dismal business of sleeping alone – liking it even, for brief moments – lying in the middle of my bed and spreading my arms and legs out wide, reveling in the fact that the vast expanse of mattress is mine, all mine!
Then the temperature dipped into the 40’s.
I abruptly stopped making snow angels in the sheets.
Huddled beneath the duvet cover, teeth chattering so hard I feared my jaw would crack, my mind flashed to a children’s book illustration of Old Man Winter – eyes glittering, cheeks bulging, thick lips blowing streams of arctic air.
C-c-c-old.
Last Sunday, after waking up yet again with blue-tipped fingers and icicle toes, I gave myself a talking-to: you’re a smart girl, I said to me, sternly. You should know that electric blankets were invented decades ago, which means there’s no good reason for you to subject your extremities to frostbite.
Which is how I found myself in Bed, Bath and Beyond, clutching one of their ubiquitous blue sale coupons, weaving through the aisles beneath the glare of lights best suited to an operating table. It took a while, but I finally found what I was looking for.
The electric blanket: ninth wonder of the world! I’d rather not need it, but since I do, it’s my new favorite thing.
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Weather was the primary language my family spoke. At family reunions; at the dinner table; during strained calls home: whenever an awkward silence threatened to overtake us, Weather was there to save us.
Sooo, how's the weather where you are? We’re going to have to stockpile more firewood if this cold snap continues. You know what they say: “Red skies in the morning…”
It used to drive me to distraction. As I dialed my parents, from miles away, I warned them silently as the telephone rang in my ear – don’t you dare talk to me about the weather! – but now I understand that discussions about rainfall and temperature are codes that relay deeper meaning.
Conversation is less about words than tone. Less about what is actually said and more about the fact that the effort was made to speak at all. Less about sentences, more about the knowledge that numbers were punched into the phone, that the desire existed to speak and be spoken to. To listen. To hear. To connect.
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I told a friend of mine the other day that I feel like a soft, furry animal that hibernates in the winter. Centuries of mammalian instinct are coursing through my veins; I just want to crawl into my cave and sleep until the blossoms appear on the trees.
I work; I sleep. I take Petra on walks.
My life is quiet and focused. It suits me perfectly right now.
While this post sat in my drafts folder, a rain front moved over San Francisco. The skies are white and thick, like oyster chowder.
Rain clouds: the atmospheric equivalent of a flannel blanket. Old Man Winter is still facing this direction, but all of his huffing and puffing won't pierce through the dense layer of moisture that swaddles our small section of the globe.
The weather report calls for more rain.
I'll take it. I have an electric blanket, after all.
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I used to think
As birds take wing
They sing through life, so why can't we?
You cling to this
You claim the best
If this is what you're offering
I'll take the rain.
- R.E.M, "I'll Take the Rain", from Reveal
