I am late today. I slept through the morning, on the couch again. If I had a roommate, the mirror under the nose would be have been in order to make sure I’m still alive. Nala slept with me. Henry went out and stayed a while. He was at the back door whining for me to let him in. We’re still stuck in the cold at 32°. Tonight we’ll get done to the 20’s.

When I was a kid, my least favorite season was winter. Christmas was over, and February vacation was a long January away. We had no days off from school in January. Most of our days looked the same. We’d play outside if we couldI remember doing homework on the kitchen table before dinner but after we’d played outside if we could . The snow on the road, on the hill, got slushy from the cars so we couldn’t go sledding on it anymore. We’d sled on the grassy hill behind my house. It wasn’t very tall, and you never went far, but the sled picked up speed right from the top of the hill.

Going fast on a sled is one of the joys of being a kid. The technique was widely known. We all used it. I’d run and jump so most of me was on the sled, only the bottoms of my legs were raised in the air. The key was the run. I’d run as fast as I could and jump on the sled just about the same time the sled hit the ground. The runners cut through the snow. Bits of snow flew in the air along the runners. The best was the crunching sound of snow meeting runner. I never had to steer until the end of the hill where you had to dodge clothes lines and some hot top. The further you went, the greater your mastery.

Another winter technique most kids mastered is walking in heavy snow, 6 to 8 inches at least. Arms are bent at the elbow just above but not touching the top of the snow. One leg at a time gets lifted above the snow top then down a bit further ahead. Lifting legs is the hardest part. To go fast takes more energy and more effort but fast is relative to height. The snow behind me was more piled than flat, a weird path needing more walkers.

I think snow is beautiful, newly fallen and untouched. I turn my lights on to watch the flakes fall. My backyard gets dog prints. It is the after snow to which I am not a fan. My plow guy didn’t show last winter after our one storm needing a plow. Luckily a neighbor, I didn’t know, came and shoveled me out. That was so kind. I need a plow guy.

Winter is stubborn. Once it has a hold, it keeps on holding. Today is partly cloudy and 30°. The high, now wait for it, will be 31°, cold, not chilly, but downright cold. I am still hibernating, trying to get rid of this malady. I missed a concert yesterday and might miss another tomorrow. I hope to be in fine fettle for Sunday’s concert.

I am at my animals’ beck and call. I can even interpret Henry’s barks unless he uses compound sentences. Both dogs have resorted to crying if I ignore them for even the shortest time, but that’s not what has me thinking. It’s beck and call. I wonder how I learned beck and call. Perhaps my mother was complaining just as I am but about us, the kids. I haven’t heard anyone use beck and call for a long time. I’ve heard beckon as in,”Winding roads that seem to beckon you,” from Old Cape Cod but only because we uke it. Words die out, disappear. Some deserve to die. Others will be missed, by a few of us at least. Doff is gone. Erewhile is too great to lose. I’ll just make an effort to save a few.

I taught my students bamboozle. They loved the word and used it in other classes. It wasn’t the definition they liked but the sound of the word. They pronounced it like balm-boozle, in their Ghanaian English accent. Their history teacher stopped and asked me about bamboozle as the word had appeared in several answers on the exam, and he didn’t know the word. I explained. He was impressed with them.

When I was a kid, the nun taught us how to look up a word in the dictionary. She explained how the words were organized by letter. I remember doing a practice sheet of finding the right pages for specific words. I got a dictionary that Christmas. It was on my list. I remember it was heavy and had a red cover. I still have a heavy dictionary with a red cover, not the same one, a later one. I used to keep it by my bed so I could look up words I didn’t know. Now it is stored in the bookcase of obsolete but still valuable books.