I have really tried to love winter. It is, after all, twenty-five percent of my life, time too precious to waste. I've tried. I can't do it.
January moves like a freight train going through Sheffield, Alabama, during the busiest time of day, while May is like the Maglev that moves across Japan. The days from Christmas to April seems longer than the rest of the year put together.
In my recollection of the cold Januarys of my youth, one in particular stands out. "Don't think I've ever seen it this cold before," Daddy said, and he had seen more than fifty winters by then. We lived in a shotgun house in a Tennessee holler, which was shaded even on the rare sunny days of winter.
The only source of heat was a big heater in the living room, which warmed that room and the adjoining kitchen. The bedrooms across the hall (someone had enclosed the dogtrot by then) had no heat at all. One night during the extreme cold, Mama tucked my two sisters and me in the bed, then put a feather mattress she had made over us. We couldn't move all night, but we were snug and warm.
School was closed for several days. We entertained ourselves by playing gin rummy with a worn-out deck of cards. A thousand- piece puzzle could keep us busy for hours, and we read whatever we had. Mama stayed busy in the kitchen, which stayed warm from constant cooking.
The big metal stove ate up the wood about as fast as it could be brought in from outside, but kept us warm as long as we stayed in the living room.
They were long, long days that I hope never have to be repeated.
Every day, I thank Father God that I live in a house with a thermostat on the wall and the whole house stays toasty warm. It is not hard to be thankful when you have survived long winters in an old, cold house.
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. ~ Genesis 8:22
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