Cold

I made a connection tonight, getting ready to take the dog out for his 10:30 p.m. bathroom, that I must have made before but forgotten.

It's not even that cold tonight, compared to the last few nights. But I realized why I obsess about the cold: I was cold my whole childhood--until I went to college.

I grew up in a 5 room apartment over a grocery store. We had a wood stove in the kitchen and a coal stove in the living room and a few electric heaters, but that was all. I grew up cold--chilled, shivering, miserable. Our bathroom only had an electric heater and no shower. So, I was cold and a tad dirty most of the time. I shower only a couple of times a week in the winter--though our bathrooms are as warm as anywhere else in our house...that's probably why, those memories of frigid baths. We didn't have a hot water heater either, so I had to heat water on the wood stove or the electric stove and carry it to the bathroom to take a bath.

Funny how much freer I feel about the cold now that all this comes back to me.

When I went to college, my parents moved to Princeton from Anawalt into a house with central heat and a hot water heater. But only then. Until then, I was always cold in the winter--chilled, shivering, miserable.

I remember I could see my breath sometimes in my bedroom, far from any heat source. It seemed normal I suppose, because that was the way it was.

You have to grow up. I'm going to do that, here in my 60's. I'm going to trust our central heat and hot water heater and not be so obsessive about the cold.

I'll be fine now. I'm not a cold child. I have heat. I'm alright. Just fine.