Winter reigns. It is another grey, cold day. Right now it is 28°. The high for today will be 32°(insert snort of derision here). I could go to the dump but I doubt I will. I am into warmth and comfort. I am into cozies and hot coffee. I am into staying home. As Scarlett was wont to say, “I’ll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.”

We have a little bit of snow on the ground but only on yards and lawns and my car of course. The snow crunches underneath when I walk on it. We had a bit of a melt then the cold came back and everything froze. Walking takes attention.

When I was a kid, we’d walk across the field on our way to school. Winter walks were the most fun. The snow tops on the field often froze. We could never resist them. We’d put our school bags down, get running starts and jump on the snow tops. They would crack and send snow quake lines cross the field to break the snow. We watched the lines travel. They became snow quakes. They never moved in a straight line. They moved quickly across the snow tops. We always watched for a while.

Where I lived in Ghana is the hottest part of the country, the driest part of the country. The worst weather is during the Harmattan occurring from December to February. Intense, dry winds come and cover everything in dust. Cleaning doesn’t clean. The air is so dry that lips and heels crack. Mosquitos and most other bugs disappear. The water is turned off a few days during the week so filled buckets waited in the shower room for my nightly shower, a Harmattan bucket bath, and toilet flushing. I got hoarse from the dust, walked on my tiptoes when my heels cracked from the dryness, stopped missing the rain and learned to live with haze. The Harmattan had one bright spot, the nights. I did love the nights. They were cold, down to the 50’s. I snuggled under a scratchy wool blanket on my bed. I never imagined I would need a blanket in Ghana.

Today is another freezing day. I think my body is trying to hibernate as I tend to sleep until almost noon. Nothing outside is inviting. Even the dogs are quickly in and out. I am so much better, only the short of breath is left, and I can recuperate for another week without missing a thing. My uke leader now has the plague, my name for it, and has cancelled events for the week. The only item left on my dance card is the dump run for later in the week. I still need to put away Christmas, bring sick hampered my efforts because of all the up and down the stairs and my breathing; however, I’m going to start today and see how far I get.

Every kid I knew had pretty much the same childhood I did. My close friends and I and most kids we knew all wore the exact same clothes every day, our school uniforms. I never minded wearing one. It was just what we all did. For my mother, it was less money for a single uniform, some of which could be handed down, than new clothes every year for the four of us. I had all the kid stuff for every season. My friends and I skated together. We went to the Saturday matinees together. We were in school together for eight years. We joined brownies then Girl Scouts. We first joined the junior drill team on Saturday mornings then quickly moved to the regular drill team where we stayed for years.

Over time my friends and I moved in all different directions. I lost track when I was in Ghana, but I ran into a few much later on, many of them my friends from elementary school, those 8 years. Right away we were comfortable with each other. We had a shared history. We shared our childhoods.

I think seeing the dusting of snow we got last night has helped me remember when I was a kid, when cold was no never mind, when the deeper the snow, the better the storm. We raced on our sleds down the hill with our thoughts only on our speed and winning, of course. These friends I have known for over seventy years pop-up everywhere.