Letters Not Sent #3

Dear Universal Order,

Please rearrange your schedule as it pertains to me. I admit I’m getting old and cranky. I’m easily annoyed. But the regularity with which certain events interrupt my activities cannot possibly be coincidental. You may claim you have no responsibility for these events, but I can think of no one else to contact regarding this matter.

Please note that I no longer wish to receive phone calls while I’m on the toilet. Further, I prefer not to hear the dogs set up a howl at the far end of the yard just as I’ve poured milk on my granola. Also, I’d appreciate not receiving UPS deliveries or random visits by Jehovah’s Witnesses when I’ve just stepped out of the shower. Nor, actually, while I’m on the aforementioned toilet.

I realize this may inconvenience the Machiavellian entity or entities responsible for this particular scheduling strategy. But these malevolent disruptions occur with a greater-than-random frequency. In fact, the phone often rings ONLY when I’ve settled on the porcelain throne after hours of no calls.

If it comes down to whether I’m allowed to enjoy my bathroom time or receive the UPS delivery (which is probably for the neighboring house anyway), please delete the delivery.

Sincerely,

Constipated

Lingering Winter

Aroma thick with thyme and marjoram steams from the simmering split pea soup. I’ve enjoyed the whole process—chopping onion, celery, and carrot, measuring the spices and selecting the bay leaves, stirring until the soupy mass starts to bubble and boil. More condensation to collect on the window panes where sleet bounces and taps it rhythm against the other side.

There’ll be no venturing out today. The roads are slick with ice. Time to relax and accept what the Mother has in store, a lingering blast of winter with all its gifts of cold and white. Wind whistling at the chimney where smoke of my wood fire plumes sideways. Time to muse on past winter days when fire blazed hot and pan lids jiggled, when my gaze settled on the distance and roamed over the years of my life.

Memories of winter’s challenges rise up to nourish me on these days, recollections of times when hardships were met and I was satisfied with my refuge, my larder, my conquest of the elements. In more distant times, I might have twisted strands of wool or linen and watched the wheel spin it to thread, or pounded clothes in a hot kettle for cleaning, or ground corn between stones to make coarse bread. I might have wrapped my children in animal skins and tied my own feet in fur before braving the cold for more wood, or brought the livestock into the other end of a rough cabin to keep them from freezing in the long nights.

How did I, of all my previous iterations, manage to occur here, now, where everything I need comes more or less effortlessly—the twist of a knob, click of a button, the turn of a key? A house with insulated walls and thick glass that keep in the warmth and allow me to watch frozen rain fall from gray-white clouds. What future embodiments of myself will wonder back on this time and what will they know? What I don’t know. What I can imagine for better. Or worse.

I don’t have to figure it out. Anyway, I can’t. Better to turn to the pan and stir the soup, add another log to the fire, stand at the window longer and marvel at the shades of gray and rust among the trees of the woods, the white of the sky and ground. Soon the scene will explode in infinite shades of green and heat will soak the edges. I’ll be pleased then to remember this cold.

Winter Night

By two a.m. the fire in the woodstove had died down enough that the cold took over. Under heavy blankets and comforter, I could feel the temperature dropping in the house. The electric radiator in the bedroom is no match for six degrees, even with window curtains pulled tight.

A quick trip to the bathroom brought me shivering back to the bed. With the covers pulled up to my nose, I imagined myself not in this last century of modern comforts but rather in the earlier vast millennia of human existence. The cave, skin-covered hut or even the wooden long house would have been far colder, warmed only by open hearth fires and our breath. Heavy furs of mammoth or bear lay under and over us as we curled our knees to our chest and ducked our cold ears into the hidden warmth.

Fire tenders dragged long dead limbs further into the blaze and tugged their fur cloaks around their shoulders, watching as sparks flew into the air and ensuring the fire stayed in its place. Cabbages, apples, onions, and turnips rested in straw lined pits, safe from the cold, and around the perimeter of the shelter, chunks of meat sat semi-frozen, waiting to be brought to the flat rocks at the fire’s edge to drip fat and send up tantalizing aroma. Even then, as food cooked, as men dragged in more wood from the pile near the shelter’s door, we kept our furs tucked over us, waiting for spring.

In the long hours of midwinter night, sleep comes and goes. Fantastical dreams shift us from our known world, so that we fly into the future or past. I relived the death of a loved one and the loss resonated through me, and then magic knowledge enabled me to speed backwards in time with him until I found a new path, a year when a different choice meant longer life, and even before that, an even better restart. Our lives moved forward from there and when we came to the fatal day, he lived.

What was the magic? In the dream, I told myself I would remember. But I don’t. I remember that it was simple, that if I had let myself know what I really know, it would have been obvious. But it’s not.

Other visions of long sleep arise and fade, memories recast in distorted frames, possible futures emblazoned on unfamiliar horizons. The mysteries of embodiment tease around the edges, other forms, foreign memories. Deep in the warm thicket of my bed, I am free to fly away and see it all.

My feet find warm spots at the dog’s side, where the cat lies curled. A screech owl screams its cry at the wood’s edge. At the three a.m. passing of the train, its distant warning echoes up from the valley and sets the coyotes singing. At four-thirty, I’m awake again, fresh from another restive dream, and wondering if I should brave the cold to start new fire.

I wait, snuggled in all my wealth of warmth, finding one comfortable position, then another, until the night starts to lighten and the dogs go outside. Now the quick wood catches in its cove of dried twigs and crumpled newspaper, and the cast iron around it warms. I make tea, open the curtains to stare out at the pale blue and pink world of dawn. Winter sets its own rhythm, and I am content to follow.