WINTER WHITE

Freezing weather in the north today amuses me as I sit on my porch in shorts and flip-flops on another beautiful sunny "Winter" day in Florida.  I don’t miss the cold but I do remember how much fun it was when I was very young. (When you are young many things were fun that aren’t fun at my age)  I’m home with my grandmother, waiting not so patiently for next year when I would finally go to kindergarten.  (My birthday is in mid-November and so I missed the deadline to go to school at 5 and had to wait until I was almost six)  

Why did I like the freezing weather?  Because when the big thermometer outside our kitchen window fell below the freezing mark I had lots of fun things to do.  For instance, my grandmother would bring in our milk delivery from our back door step. I would love to see (and taste) the frozen cream that pushed the paper cap up out of the bottle and I would have a breakfast popsicle or as she called it my “moo-sicle”!  And there was much more - this was just the start of my winter day.

Nanny’s weekly chores rarely changed.  Monday was wash day and I joined her in our chilly shed and watched her fill the big “wringer washing machine” with buckets of hot water and also a big wash tub with cool water.  And almost every time, she would tell me how when she was a girl  “hot water didn’t come out of a faucet like it does today".  She would start the big Sears washer and the rhythmic pulsing sound it made scrubbing began. It was hypnotic.  And when she figured it was enough washing she transferred the clothes to the rinse tub and then fed each piece through the wringer (which scared me...she had warned many times to never get my hand “caught in a darn ringer!”   I never did.  But I did like to dip my hands in the rinse water and always pull them out quickly. Nanny would scold, “Now Calvin, you know it’s cold...why do you always do that?  We both always laughed.  However, the end of this long  process was the most fun.  Nanny would fill a big laundry basket and  put on a bandana. We  “bundled up” for our trek to the Arctic - our backyard.  As she hung the sheets on the line, they would many times instantly freeze.  “Hard as a board already...must really be cold...maybe you should go inside Calvin?”  But I never did.  I had too much fun walking between the stiff white sheets billowing sails.  I would punch them as they banged against me and they made a cracking sound.  What a simple joy it was to run up and down the rows of flying sheets  as Nanny, with a clothes pin in her mouth, would wrestle them onto the clothes lines. She would then push them high off the ground with a long clothes prop my grandpa made for her.  I would alway hide behind a white wall and she would pretend not to know where I had gone and shout my name... her words would get blown away in a March wind.  I imagined we were in a gale at sea, our sails full as we flew over the waves.

And then we would go inside to warm up.  Nanny would rub my hands and pull my feet out of my grandfather’s giant golasches.  She would tell me to go stand by the oil burning heater which warmed our whole house from our living room.  While the next load was churning in the machine she would make me some hot Ovaltine and it would remind me to save the label and ask mom to send it in (with 11 more!) for a Space Cadet decoder ring like one of my TV heroes - Buzz Corey used each week.  This routine would go on most of the day but my “help” would not.  I turned to a coloring book because Nanny said I had enough “air”.  This didn’t last long and I wished that my friends weren't having fun in school.  Nanny would continue her wash.  She never failed to remind me “to not get into anything... she would be right back”, as she ventured out again and again into our Stratton Avenue tundra.

My memory fades now like melting snow as I look out at a palm tree in front of my condo softly moving with the breeze.  I think how lucky I am to be living in Florida and away from the cold winds of January and I say quietly to my grandmother long gone, “Thanks Nanny for my frosty adventures...thanks for working so hard week after week and never complaining...my dear you would be amazed at what kids take for granted today.  

And for a moment I feel a bit sorry that my grandchildren will never get the chance to run between sheets on a white winter’s day.