The morning is cold, and the wind is brisk. The weatherman says the cold will be here for a couple of days. A blanket is permanently on my bed. The windows are kept closed. The deck is bleak, its furniture covered and everything else put away. I can see my neighbors’ houses again through bare branches. Around the house I wear my warm slippers and a sweatshirt. I’m quickly getting into winter mode.

Yesterday in the late afternoon we had a thunder shower. The rain came and went quickly. First it got really dark then came giant drops pelting the house and roof. Gracie raced inside and shook the rain off her fur. I sat in the dark for a while and listened to the thunder. It’s one of my favorite sounds. The storm was spent in about twenty minutes and the sun reappeared.

As a little kid, I loved feeling scared, surprised by the unexpected. It was different than being afraid because scared was fun. It was a haunted house display at Halloween when a creature jumped out waving its arms and screaming boo. We used to love to scare each other. We’d hide behind the house or a tree and jump out and yell. No one ever admitted to being scared, but we were. It always made us laugh afterwards, mostly in relief.

I remember being home when my parents went grocery shopping. If I heard strange noises, I’d stop and listen and sometimes get afraid. Once I even took to hiding under my bed. When I got older, after having seen too many horror movies, I found out it was the first place a murderous creature would look. The closet was a close second. Once I yelled at the noise. “Hello, anyone there?” I figured bravado would scare it away. My father answered. He was at the front door with the groceries, and I had heard him fumbling at the doorknob. He scared the heck out of me.