Winter and Three Wishes

Coats bedevil me.

As long as the temperature remains above 0F, you’ll not find me in a coat, no matter what the date. Even if the temperature drops below 0F, I refuse to wear a coat in the car–not for a trip across town or across country. If I’m merely going from my house to the garage to the store and back again, I won’t wear a coat.

I’ll load a coat in the car (in fact, a coat often spends the entire winter, unworn, in the wayback of the mini along with my other cold-weather-emergency supplies) but my body remains happily unencumbered by heavy wool or down as I make my way through the cold months.

I hate coats. My arms feel restricted and I invariably overheat; I cannot tolerate the cognitive dissonance of roasting on a freezing day.

Also, my constant small companions are a collective 60+ pounds of wiggly-giggling heat, packaged in curly-headed squirming containers. Why would I need a coat when I’m toting my own small furnaces around with me?

My determination to clothe my body as I see fit turns my mother, especially, into a gibbering mass of outraged parental concern. The fact that I’ve made it to nearly 40 years old and have yet to suffer even the tiniest degree of frostbite, much less death from freezing, fails to deter her indignation at my flaunting of the weather.

I remain unfazed by her raving. When it’s cold, I like not to be hot.

This is the main reason I love these dark days of December. I love this time of year because we are now so close to the upward swing of things. Light will return to this portion of the Earth. We are halfway through the darkest portion of the year. It cannot get any darker. For the next six months the light will increase.

If I had my way, I’d list the seasons as so: Summer, Autumn, Almost-Spring, and Spring.

I feel deep gratitude for the return of the light. That’s what I celebrate now, in these painfully short days and wickedly long nights in late December. I’ll watch my mailbox carefully, not for the same Christmas cards I receive every year, but for the first seed catalog of the season, which invariably arrives at this time. I’ll hang over the pages, trying to soak up some of the glorious hot summer light from the pictures.

And when my mother asks once again why I am not wearing a coat, I’ll tell her, “Mom, it’s Almost-Spring! Light is coming back! Who needs a coat?”

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And now for HNT Three Wishes

To Shay, I wish an inbox packed full of cock the next time you decide to hold a festive-cock contest. And I wish that you’ll let me help judge again!

To Missouri Savage, I wish you the ability to change what needs to be changed in your life so that you will be completely at peace.

And finally, to Osbasso, I give you a many thanks for running HNT every week. I wish you infinite patience in dealing with Blogger’s many ineptitudes and outright failures.