Deep Freeze

Sayulita: birdsong wakes me up, birdsong and ocean waves are music to my ears as i write, sheltered, here at the casita, from the noisy sun-and-warmth-seekers’ holiday madness in this beach town

here at the casita, an enormous stuccoed wall painted white and covered in pink bougainvillea creates a container of safety, comfort, and cleanliness, of lush elysian tropical greenery inviting bright orange butterflies, boisterous parrots, comedic oversized chicken-like chachalaca birds, sun-bathing lizards, and lazy iguanas hanging out in the trees above

i watch them from the poolside lounge chairs as the palms sway, as the scarlet hibiscus flowers beckon iridescent-colored hummingbirds, as the mammoth indigenous salate tree loudly drops forearm-length-sized leaves, and the ominous-looking frigate birds fly overhead

silly me, forgot my laptop and ipad back home..really? that’s what i get for bragging about how fast i tap tap tap out words on a keyboard..this little phone mocks my fingertips, makes them feel fat, makes a lefty out of my right hand

suddenly i am a swimmer who cannot float

so much work to do before taking off to india for the whole month of january..quiet time away in sayulita was supposed to give me ample time to work about two hours each day.. to finally catch up…i fear i’ll never catch up on all the correspondences, emails, texts, facebook messages, phone messages, what’s app, line app, etc etc

doesn’t matter now

photos will have to wait until i can download them onto my computer when back home

so i read, lots of reading, and plenty of time for new year’s reflections

a free mind dredges up a storm of memories and rick generously lends me his computer upon my asking so i can tap tap tap while he frets about lending me his computer

my sisters tell me how cold it is in indiana..my nephew gives me reports of freezing temperatures in ohio, my cousin in toronto tells me it is very cold there, that they are in the middle of a deep freeze, that winter came in pretty strong this year…and even though i am immersed in a tropical paradise, sweat gathering in the small of my back as i write, my mind easily slips back to past winters in indiana

the lake effect is something i grew up with, a weather phenomenon bringing on fierce winds, bitterly cold temperatures, heavy snowfalls, blizzard conditions, icy roads

it is a cold one can never forget

i am the little girl who digs deeper into my warm slippered-feet as I look outside the window to watch mom in her heavy winter coat, well insulated against the deep freeze, shoveling snow from the walkways…daddy, looking like an eskimo in his fluffy warm fur-lined hooded coat, walking the snowblower up and down the driveway, clearing a trail for us, i watch them producing high banks of snow on the edges of the sidewalk and driveway, they are my superheros

they’d open the garage door, start up the car, run back into the warmth of the house until the car’s engine warmed up before driving the family off to one destination or another…from warm house to warm car to warm shopping malls, avoiding the cold at all costs

how fast could i build a snowman? pretty fast then dash into the house and defrost my hands and feet as i admire my mr frosty from the windows

in the middle of a vicious blizzard, bracing against howling winds, i bravely walked with daddy, hanging on to him as he walked the overworked struggling snowblower towards my big sister’s house, to fetch her and bring her and her little ones safely to our house where there is always lots of food, big sister very pregnant, due any day and her husband got stuck at the steel mill, my young mind wonders if we’ll have to deliver the baby or will a helicopter come fetch my sister if she goes into labor? the look on my parents’ faces tell me they are having the same thoughts

catholic school and the nuns make us wear the silly uniforms in the sub zero temperatures, plaid skirts that expose a portion of our legs from knee down to bobby socks, the silly saddle shoes giving our feet no protection against the ice and frost, my mom made me go against school rules by having me wear slacks under the skirt, “if they have something to say, tell them to call me, i have a word or two for those nuns, believe me, they’d be best off not dealing with me”

the nuns of sts peter and paul make us go out for recess, out into the deep freeze, “keep moving kids, run run run move stop complaining it’s good for you,” their cruel smiles take pleasure in watching us shiver

we invented a playground game to deal with the cold…we found a corner where the dark brick walls of the church shielded us from the winds..we girls took turns crowding crushing each other into the corner..gradually the girls on the outside got a chance to go into the corner to be warmed and crushed by the bodies of the others girls…it was fun and it worked as long as you were in the corner for a brief moment..years later when i watched the film march of the penguins, i saw a similar survival technique practiced by the polar penguins

brilliant!

wish my mom had a chance to deal with the nuns on the issue of cold

maybe she did?

my cousin came to visit from europe one christmas…we had so much fun with him..we finally had a handsome very entertaining young man in the house..he was so much fun…he loved us five girls and coddled my pregnant sisters jeanie and zina, made them feel like a million bucks and had my mom and dad rolling in laughter…then, while he was visiting, the chicago blizzard of 1979 hit! the forecast called for 2-4 inches of snow but ended up dumping 21 inches..the howling winds-gusts of up to 40 miles per hour-, which lasted for over 38 hours, blasted snow drifts that banked up against our roof! Dad had to shovel out a tunnel to get us out of the house…O’Hare was closed for 96 hours, my cousin was stuck with us, and we all went stir crazy…all roads closed, insanely beautiful meringue roads with no tire tracks, no footprints, subzero temperatures, rose colored sunsets across the flat hoosier horizon

where did the birds go

just days before my cousin was finally going to leave, my friend simone and her boyfriend peppy called and invited us to go out for a ride in peppy’s van….major roads were now cleared, peppy had chains on his studded tired..my parents were angry because they didn’t like simone, had never even met peppy, didn’t want us leaving the house, thought my girlhood friend simone was wild…

and she was

wonderfully wild

peppy and simone showed up in a decked out hippy van, a volkwagon van complete with shag carpets and lava lamps..we headed out to lake michigan of all places, wicked cold…peppy pulls out some beer and a joint and my cousin parties with him…peppy suggests we go out to walk on the frozen lake…so we did, was like walking on a glacier but we didn’t have yak tracks and the waves, whipped up by blizzard winds, had frozen into peaked waves and we kept falling and laughing hysterically… a panicked frozen sensation in my hands and feet came on suddenly and i strongly urged us to all go back in the van… stoned and drunk peppy had trouble finding his keys because his hands were so frozen..fear crept into me, daggers in my head, what if i die out here with stupid peppy and my cousin from england and my wild friend simone? in a surge of terror, i ran over to fumbling stumbling peppy, took my gloves off, and started a mad search into his pockets, i found his damned keys, got the frozen door to the van unstuck with the help of wild simone, started up the van and stuffed still-laughing-idiot-peppy into the passenger seat while wild-captain-simone took over the mother ship

it took a while to defrost our hands and feet… i cried because it hurt so bad

one never forgets such cold

and stupidity

one more memory floods my mind…my parents are now old and very ill…zina, jim, and i are visiting them, it’s our last christmas with dad, we didn’t know that fact for sure at the time but, in an unspoken kind of way, we knew

a call comes in around 8pm from the nursing home where our youngish sister lives with old people in a home where she gets 24 hours care, her life plagued with the intricacies and hosts of problems caused by MS… she is in the ICU again, gone septic again, has had a seizure again, is fighting for her life again..but wait, we can’t tell our parents…it will do them in..they are already so fragile, so spent, they have suffered so much already, everybody knows a parent cannot take such sadness…if jeanie dies tonight, how will we tell them? will they be able to survive such a loss? we don’t know what to do…all we know is that mom and dad will go to bed soon and zina, jim, toni and i will sneak out to the hospital to see jeanie..

it is finally around 10:30pm when we leave the house…mom and dad are asleep….it is december…we are in a deep freeze…i am filled with an eerie sense of dread…jim and zina also moved away from indiana long ago, but my broth-in-law jim knows the way to the hospital..could get us there with his eyes closed if he had to….when we arrive, we walk in the sub zero temperatures from the car to the hospital door, it is 17 below with the wind chill factor, the lake effect has us in danger, within seconds my nostrils are frozen, my lungs feel restricted, is it the cold or the fear of losing my sister again and again and again?

jeanie survived that night, my parents never figured out that we sneaked out like teenagers on a clandestine date, to witness my sister jeanie bravely hanging on to life on that

cold night

that cold night….

And i’m back now, to jump into the pool

in the sunshine of sayulita

jeanie still alive in my heart, my parents as present as ever…still

and i continue my new year’s resolution thoughts

for those of you in the deep freeze, stay warm, be safe, live life in a big and brave way (like jeanie did), the only way for all of us to live