The Cold

I don’t like the cold! I feel hostile toward it. It traps me in my house. When I venture outside it attacks me. It slaps me in the face with icy fingers. It teasingly scatters ice so that the grass becomes slippery and the ground unsteady beneath my feet. Plants wither in the cold and seem to look at me pleadingly for help.

I have to prepare to face this hostile adversary like preparing for battle. I put on sweaters and scarfs and mittens and boots like armor. Yet still the chilling enemy sneaks inside and underneath my layers of clothes. In numbing discomfort, my skin crackles with dryness and the brilliant, mean glare from the snow has no mercy on my eyes.

Cold isn’t my friend. It fiendishly keeps my car from starting and like an invader, sneaks around my house searching for cracks in the windows where it can enter. This bitter, implacable cold howls and threatens in the night.

As the weatherman on TV predicts yet another storm coming our way I am almost ready to wave the white flag of surrender—to retreat to a warm coverlet, a hot cup of tea and a good book and wait for Spring to come to my rescue.