The blizzard of the week screamed in last night. Snow falling relentlessly over Boston transforms our streets into another city, another planet. But for me, this is a blast from my past. When my kids were little, we lived in NE Wisconsin and we had winters just like this one. Lots of snow, lots of cold. And the sub zero cold there is serious; it wants to kill you. We heated our uninsulated 100 year old farmhouse with a woodstove. The fire couldn't go out from about Thanksgiving to Easter or the pipes would freeze. We had a lot of power outages, but at least I could cook ontop of the woodstove, which takes forever, but does work. I would start a pot of chili first thing in the morning to have it ready by dinner.
And here's the funny thing. I love snow days. You'd think being cooped up in a small house with kids, dogs and cats with no Internet, cellphones or laptops with no possibility of getting out for days would drive you nuts. But I loved it. We were glad to be warm and fed and dry. We read, drew, colored, cooked, built stuff, looked up things in the encyclopedia. We talked to each other. And for a really wild time, we put a record on the record player and danced.
And the chili? Almost never made it past lunch time. There were testing spoons checking it out by 10 in the morning and by noon, it was always pronounced perfect. In a snowed in house in the dead of winter, snow days can be heaven.
deborahdendler.com
Please LIKE: https://www.facebook.com/DeborahDendlerSculpture
