COLD DAY

When I got up this morning at 7:30 (I know I was lazy) the temperature was 22° F. Now at 1:30 it’s up to a balmy 25° F. The coldest I remember at home in Milwaukie, Oregon, is 14° F. Remembering winter days of my childhood that was one dark morning long ago but typical of our lives.
My mother had got me up for breakfast and a surprise. The radio was tuned to KWJJ and what we would now call Classic Country was brightly spilling all over the kitchen. My impression is that we still had the wood cook stove and the water heater in the kitchen, so the house was warm by those standards. The back door separating us from the outside was a raised panel door the top third of which was a single glazed window. It was that window that my mom wanted me to see. Jack Frost had painted a full half of it, beautifully spreading plumes of ice crystals across it in. Almost a paisley pattern in translucent white.
That was about it. “Look. Jack Frost was here.” Then it was on to the preparations for the day. Dad’s lunch of sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, a thermos of hot coffee and other home made foods in jars crammed the lunch pail, a rectangular box with a domed lid that held the thermos by means of wire retainer and closed by two chrome latches. That was it except for those special times when there was left over cake or pie. Then a piece was wrapped carefully in wax paper and placed on top of all the rest.
What happened next was my scrubbing. We did not shower daily. We scrubbed stripped to the waist in front of the sink. On cold days that was an onerous task. As a small boy I wasn’t at all attracted to water except in mud puddles. Mix it with soap? It would be something straight out of Calvin and Hobbs. And so what I started was always finished by my Mom. But better her than my Aunt Amy who must have had nanny training in Teutonic torture. Somehow I survived and I always felt warmer getting dressed after the ordeal by water. But I’m sure my friends wondered how I got sun burned in the middle of winter.
The rest of the day was school for me. What went on at home during my absence? I don’t know. But after school even though it got dark early we managed to play in the yard. And there were two or three 15 minute radio programs to listen to. Although grade schoolers didn’t have homework my Mom would have me read from the readers she had bought. There were chores like filling the wood box or taking out the garbage - table scraps and the like were buried in the orchard as a soil amendment. Then my Dad might read aloud from one of the books he was reading. To bed by eight and in the morning we would start again.
I guess that by today’s standards it may seem to have been a bit bleak but we were happy. And happy is important.