almost okay

Dear Lyzako,

Even though I am descended from a long line of warm-blooded hillbillies, I must confess that each year about this time I begin to look forward to winter.

As the daylight grows shorter and the afternoon shadows swing further north each day, I long for the cool night air that autumn brings, the chill that slows foot traffic down the sidewalk and keeps that annoying, constantly-barking bitch-hound-from-Hell next door inside the house more often than not.

The indrawn breath of air that quenches my spirit's thirst like the first taste of cold beer after a long day of difficult work under the punishing smile of the sun. The exhale a cartoon balloon of hovering frost that dissipates in the wind.

Then, winter.

Yes, we have to shovel the walks and driveways. Yes, it's difficult to drive. But the magnificent silence that results from six inches of freshly-fallen snow and a forecast for lows in the teens... well, it seems as if God himself has granted my dearest wish and sent all the loudest fools in this world to Hell.

I may already have told you this, but I used to have a recurring dream in which I played baseball as a child under a high sun in the middle of what I knew to be night. In this dream, I would vociferously point out the fact that it was nearly midnight and we still had enough light to play ball. The other kids seemed to not understand my point.

I believe some sort of cellular memory survives within us. Perhaps the strength of it ebbs and flows with age or some other circumstance, but that dream of midnight baseball (repeated over time) caused me to believe that I lived a much happier life in the past somewhere significantly north of Michigan.

We barely survived those winters and played throughout the brief summers in that life, but the survival was a precious memory of itself. That heat we had to work so hard to provide when the sun went away created a space where we lived beyond the harsh rules of Mother Earth, a space where we collectively survived.

So when winter rolls around these days, that precious feeling of having made a space for myself in this cold, cruel world causes a puddle of strength to appear in my heart. I feel like a happy survivor. The morning coffee changes from a necessary daily dose into a palm-warming ritual that fuels what little love is left within me.

I can't wait until the first frost.

Ever the Optimist,
Marty Sherman

PS: The challenge of aging gracefully is a difficult thing to balance, balance being part of what makes the graceful side of aging so difficult. Two nights ago I forcefully stubbed my toe into the base of the living room sofa as I reached for the remote to silence the stereo. I don't need a doctor to tell me that it's broken. I just need time for it to heal. Did I mention I was drunk? Luckily, it hasn't caused me any kind of real pain beyond the first twenty-four hours, during which it throbbed in time to the beat of my warmly generous heart. Now it just feels like I have a very numb and sweaty Slim Jim stuck between my little toe and the one two toes to the other side. On my fucking left foot.