Day 55: Love in Winter

It's cold. An artic freeze, the weather man says. No snow. Just cold dry air and days that quickly slide into night.

The warm glow of Christmas is gone, packed away for another eleven months of hibernation. Outside everything is contrast. The way hardened snow gives way to black pavement. The wood end of a shovel, sticking out of a plowed-up snow bank. The way my hands stiffen up in the cold as I start the car a full 20 minutes before we have to leave. The stairs are crusted with ice in the distinct shape of a bootprint and I slip, my slippers falling off as I clutch the pastic handle of a cheap metal door. A door that swings out leaving me stretched over the icy steps before I can scoot into the porch. This house was built for summers. It wasn't built for January and I can feel the heat escaping through cracks and single pane glass.

I love winter and I love the cold beside my husband. We're forced to snuggle into each other. My feet always find the warm spot behind his knees. I say I must be cold blooded; a phrase my mother always used, which essentially means the opposite of science. That our coldness is deep down in the blood.

Love in winter is different than any other kind of love. It's survival love. It's love that you can feel when you huddle closer and your skin moves from cold to warm. Rich says he's my furnace and I like to imagine his heart pumping out little flames to warm the air around us. I wonder how I ever stayed warm without him and hope I never have to find that out.