Cool

The weather is cool now. The temperature this morning when I woke was 51 degrees, but with the wind out of the northeast at about 5 mph, it felt cooler.

When I went outside to pick up the local paper and the New York Times, I wore only a pair of slacks and a tee-shirt. By the time I’d walked the thirty or so feet to where the newspapers lay, I was chilled, shivering a bit. This doesn’t happen very often here in South Florida. It’s a wonderful change for those of us who live in heat so many months of the year.

When I talked to my mother on the telephone last night, she said she was getting ready for the cold weather. She made it sound as if a blizzard was headed her way and that she had to get the livestock into the barn before the cattle froze solid where they stood. What she meant, I knew, was that she had to put on a pair of the thick, woolen socks my old man used to wear when his feet were cold and throw an extra blanket on her bed.

Anyway, I told my mom I thought the change in weather was great. "Humph," she said. "I had enough of this in Chicago." I remembered, then, waking in the morning to find the milk left by our back door frozen so the cream – solid – pushed up and out of the bottle like magic, holding on its apex the cardboard bottle cap. I remembered walking to school through heaps of city-gray snow, shivering as an icicle built over my upper lip. I remembered hopping out of bed very early one morning to sit on a towel atop the steam-heat radiator under my bedroom window, watching the snow fall, wondering if I could figure out a way to avoid walking to school.

I knew what my mother meant, then. "But it is nice for a change, because we know it won’t last."
"I guess so," my mother said. But I knew she didn’t mean it.

She isn’t having it so easy these days. Her husband dead now for more than a decade. Her brothers both dead and her cousins as well. The retired teacher across the street, good for a laugh and companionship at dinner, died two years ago. And that’s not all.

My older brother sick, in a wheelchair. Me – her favorite, of course – is sick with terminal cancer and my younger brother ailing as well. She’s worried about us and about the few investments she has, the ones that pay for her food. She worries about her own health, too, after all, she was born more than 90 years ago.

I can see why she wants it warm. But still, for me at least, it’s a welcome change.