For a certain amount of hours, the cold is okay if you have
on...
For a certain amount of hours, the cold is okay if you have
on enough clothes. Twenty-seven degrees yesterday in Cambridge and we were
working outside, roofing the addition we’d built. Big steamy plumes of breath,
snowflakes small and falling fast, a different view of the neighborhood from
thirteen feet above the ground, and hammerbangs echoing across backyards as we
shifted back and forth across the roof nailing sheets of shingles, layer after
layer.
Five shirts, a wool sweater, a down vest, a jacket, eight
total layers atop. Below, the leggings I run in, and over that, jeans. “Brought
something for you,” M. said in the morning. She pulled a pair of fleece-lined
pants from the back of the van. “Regular pants aren’t going to cut it today.”
She was right. There was an exhilaration to much of the day, a feeling of
urgency –
stop moving, get cold; keep moving, stay warm – and the good challenge of
being outside on an inhospitable afternoon, an enhanced sort of aliveness, of every
exhale witnessable, of trying to keep the creeping ache in the fingers tips at
bay, an exaggerated awareness of blood, body, and air.
Besides the fleece-lined pants, M. brought another surprise
with her to combat against the cold. From under an unused bale of insulation in
the back seat of the van, she pulled a crock pot out filled with stew and
plugged it into an extension cord which draped out a window and into the narrow
alley at the side of the house. While we worked, it heated, lamb stew she’d
made with peas, potatoes, rosemary. She brought styrofoam bowls and two spoons
and we sat in her van at lunch, a little later than usual to allow for the stew
to heat enough, and we got warm.
By three that afternoon, the cold crawled in and took hold.
Snot dripped from our noses, we clapped to warm our hands, swore more, talked
less. For all the clothes and the warm stew with delicious chunks of lamb, for
all the hammering and clambering up and down the ladders, the cold had its way,
and we surrendered, a little earlier than usual, and I walked home thinking how
this season pushes you differently, keeps you focused, sharp, and moving,
better for body, better for brain, and about how many ways it’s possible to find
warmth. I walked home feeling winter as a friend.
