Cold is cold

The house that my parents live in is often cold. It was built in the 60s and as far as I know, no one has ever verified that it is actually insulated, except for the attics that are visibly insulated to varying degrees. My bedroom was the smallest and the coldest by far. I haven't lived there for 17 years but I can still remember the frost on the inside of the windows on the coldest mornings (they put new windows in eventually, but long after I moved out) and how cold the hardwood floors were year round. The warmest place in the house was the children's bathroom. The vent in the floor used to blow like a hairdryer. I can remember waking up in the morning and finding my youngest sister curled up on the bathroom floor. (I can also remember being pissed that she thought of it and I hadn't. This is the same sister who, in the summer, would sleep in front of the only fan in the whole damn house, but that is another story entirely.)

The rooms in our house in New England ranged from 10 to 60 years old and the insulation ranged from "shitty" to "nil." In fact when we opened the walls to convert the dining room into a bedroom for Bug, we found ZERO insulation, just the backside of the wooden siding. We added as much insulation as we could as we remodeled, but he house was never, ever warm enough. The wide master bedroom had too many windows to stay warm, in spite of the fireplace. Oh, and the radiant heat in the ceiling kept the top of our heads warm. Yes, not the FLOOR, but the CEILING. (It made fabulous cracks in the plaster.) We didn't have a/c in that house, but somehow the summer stickiness was never as bad as the winter cold that seeped in everywhere in spite of our best efforts to weatherstripsealcaulkclogup every gap. There, I dreaded stepping out of the shower. I knew that the moment I stepped out, I would be sucked into the cold black hole.

Have you been to the cold black hole? When you feel so cold that you feel hopeless and vaguely scared and know in your soul that you will never, ever feel completely warm again?

Sometimes, while I am in the cold black hole I experience intense déjà vu. Suddenly I am transported to a dark mornings, circa 1985, and I am walking to the bus stop--perhaps the most excruciating of all cold. Maybe I never had a warm enough coat, or maybe I was too cool to wear enough layers.* All I really remember well is the wind pressing against my coat, my fingers freezing inside of my gloves, my nose running, numb toes, and the intense belief that my parents must really and truly hate us to make us stand on the corner waiting for the school bus rather than driving us in to school like our friends' parents did.

Tonight I shivered as I was getting into the shower. For the first time, it is less than 70 in here. It took a long time for the shower to heat up to the intense skin-pinking temperature that I prefer and while I waited I caught a glimpse of the cold black hole. Thankfully, it only lasted a second, but the feeling was as intense as ever. I've lived in Texas for almost 8 (non-consecutive) years but I'm still a Northern girl, conditioned to dread the cold in whatever form it takes.



*Around that time, my parents bought us all puffy down coats for Christmas. For whatever reason, they bought ski jackets for my sisters and for me a god-awful lilac colored knee-length puffy coat. I felt like a purple snowman. I never, ever wore it. I think that it really hurt their feelings but I didn't care. I was willing to brave the cold black hole to avoid wearing that stupid, horrible coat.