Frozen ........

It is cold out …. very cold, and if you turn on the news you find it’s even colder elsewhere. As I walked across the front yard to retrieve the morning paper, the ground crunched beneath my feet like crisp breakfast cereal poured fresh from a new box. I wave a gloved hand in front of my face to clear the thin veil of smoke emanating from my bare, chapped lips and I hear, “Screech!” just above my head. Looking up in the clear blue sky I see birds trace an invisible path some distance above me and I thought, “If this is where you flew to escape winter from up north, then the joke was on you.” But then this is the South, and it’s supposed to be warm here. As Southerners, we all tend to have a naturally strong constitution, because circumstances over the course of decades have bred it into us in a Darwinesque fashion as a means to survive, fit and strong in a region that has had more than its share of struggles and strife throughout history. Then as I endeavored to put on my fourth layer this morning prior to leaving the house for the day, I wondered where Al Gore currently resided in his thinking with respect to his theory on global warming right now, which made me yearn for the light bulbs I so love that much more. I swear if I had the means, I’d go buy up every last remaining Edison-inspired bulb before they were forever gone, but I digress …..

It would seem it’s never a good idea to be frozen under any circumstances, whether that be maintaining a certain ‘look’ for far too long, as in ‘frozen in time’ or to suffer paralysis in the form of being ‘frozen in fear’. If one is a proud member of the working class, they certainly don’t want their wages frozen, conversely if a person happens to be searching for a job, then a ‘hiring freeze’ is never welcomed news either.

When I was a little girl and insisted on playing with my siblings and neighbor’s children outside in this kind of weather right up until my lips turned blue, my mother would shout from the warmth just inside the front door, “Get in here before you freeze your tail off!” Or even worse, “freeze to death,” but that never did actually happen. My tail – such that it is – is still firmly intact, and I’m here today to write this blog thereby serving to prove these were just unfounded theories. In addition, we kids were also sternly warned never to walk on a frozen pond, lest we be unfortunately surprised that the ice was not thick enough to support our weight, thereby serving to endanger our very lives.

To be ‘frozen out of a conversation’ is an altogether different kind of pain no one wishes to suffer, causing feelings of insecurity to take hold within one’s mind that can last for years, and to feel frozen in a bad relationship with no clear direction in which to turn is something so many of us have had to endure at some point in life. Last of all waiting on ‘hell to freeze over’ is never a good idea as it just seems to take too long, and who has that kind of time? So what is one to do when they’re suffering from having been frozen in any regard? For me that would have to take the form of courage, to be brave enough to blast past the constrictions we place around ourselves in order to protect our pride that we may venture down the “Road Less Traveled” in order to seek a more comfortable place to reside where we can actually be happy, feel safe, enjoy love and experience the kind of warmth that gives comfort even on the coldest of days, because in the end, it is the only thing that will survive the test of time.