Storm 2

The storm raged on until late Friday night. Driving home from work was slow going, but people were all driving pretty sensibly for a change. I had really wanted to stop at the market for some fresh fish for dinner (we've been going meatless on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent), but I really didn't want to get out of the car until I was back home.

The house was cold, and I wished that I had something to put in the oven, but without going through a lot of work, that wasn't going to happen- so I made ravioli and doctored up some canned tomato sauce with olives and capers and anchovies, and we ate dinner while listening to the hail pelt the windows.

I found myself feeling really tired, and really cold. I suspected I was coming down with something, Gary was in the mid-stages of a cold, and people all around at church seemed to have something. I decided to go to bed early and read until I fell asleep. I read a lot in bed. There are always at least a dozen books I'm in the process of reading next to my bed. I read just before falling asleep, or to help fall back asleep when I wake up in the middle of the night.

Despite a sweatshirt, sweatpants,and four blankets, I could not get warm enough to hold a book on Friday night. ( and it was a Guido Brunetti mystery, by Donna Leon- one of my favorite authors) I shivered uncontrolably, listening to the driving "pings' of the hail strikng the windows and the wind howling throught the trees just outside the window. The tree has a windchime hanging from it, which was clanging mercilessly in the gusts.

"How do people do it?" I thought to myself. "How do they survive being outside on a night like this? How could anyone possibly continually experince feeling this cold? "

Three nights previous, when the temperature outside had reached 60, Frank, the outreach worker who helps our Feast guests with referrals for shelter and health issues, had speculated that we had seen the last of the "Code Blues" (where the city police are empower to forcibly bring people in from the streets for their own good) for the winter. Now we were experiencing the most extreme combination of winter weather of the year.

I don't remember ever having the cold feeling leave me before I finally fell asleep. I do remember praying for others who have to live in penetrating cold all the time. Maybe I fell asleep feeling better about myself for being empathetic with those who suffer the extremes of the elements.

When I awoke on Saturday, I stayed under the covers along time, afraid to get out from under them. I sort of rememberd the thoughts I was having the night before. But I realized no matter what, I wasn't really that cold, and, certainly, I wasn't at any kind of risk. But the only way that I could ever appreciate what it must be like to live through a winter like this, out of doors, unable to shake the feeling of cold, would be to ask they people who do it, day after day.

I'm not sure that I'm brave enough to do that.