The Deep Freeze

Today was the twelfth day of temperatures below freezing. I have spend more hours indoors than I have for a very long time. It brought to mind my childhood home......

We lived in a small two bedroom brick ranch over a full basement. The house could get very very cold...especially the wood floors. There was no central heat system and no fireplace (until later). Two portable heaters supplied enough heat for our family during the cold months. One was located in the hallway outside the bedroom door and the other in the kitchen. As I child and adolescent I enjoyed running from the kitchen into the den and then sliding down the waxed and polished hallway in my sock feet. If my little toe didn't get caught under the heater the hallway, I could dive into the bed just past the bedroom door. There are too many memories of my piggy toe bleeding and bandaged for these escapades.

The living room, which was reserved for adult visitors and holidays had a floor heater. This heater was also reserved for the same events. There was an accordion door separating the living room from the rest of the house...just to be sure no heat dare escape. Everyday, from first through eighth grade, I entered the living room (regardless of the temperature) and was quarantined for an hour to practice the piano. I guess my mother thought that if I was focused enough on my practicing, I might generate enough heat to forget the frigid temperatures. It's no wonder that it took eight years to complete only TWO music books...with one of them being "Teaching Little Fingers How to Play". My frozen little bleeding toes never had to used the piano pedals, since I did not progress far enough to know what the pedals were actually for. Bless Ms. Joiner's pointed toed high heels and her heart too....she tried so hard to teach me.....She had no idea what obstacles I faced to learn to play that damned piano.

It was my sister (six years older), Teresa, that excelled. She could play The Fairy Wedding Waltz as if she had been taught by one of the great masters. Her fingers glided over the ivories. It was my mother's dream for us to make it to the stage, I believe. What a disappointment it must have been, watching me eat my carnation corsage while waiting to go onto the recital stage.

But, I digress...........

I can feel the winter chill in my childhood home as I sit in my present home wrapped in a down comforter. This house is drafty. It's colder in some rooms than others in spite of central heat. The wood floors are icy. There is a "Living Room" which is home to the same Duncan Phyfe sofas that my mother forbid us to touch. Although I should add - they reflect a rather trendy retro style, due to my amazing design skills (lol). Appropriately, my sister kept the piano.

In many ways, my present house is a mirror of the one I grew up in. While is it a few decades younger and a few square feet larger, it is a home. It's warmed...not so much by electricity and/or gas, but by the movement and living of a family.