~she only thought that she would~

     The days continue to go by quickly and it is with amazement that I look at the calendar this morning to see that we have only a few more days left in the month of January.  A little over a week more and we can say "farewell" to the first month of the year in 2015.  So what shall we make of these days that are left before saying "hello" to February?  Time itself will tell.

     There is a slow drizzle of water running from the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom here in our house.  We knew that the thermometer would dip downward towards the 10 degree mark in the early morning hours today and waking up to frozen pipes would start the day off in a not so good manner.  It's sure been a long time since I had to experience that kind of trouble.  As a kid growing up on a farm back home in Kansas, frozen pipes were sometimes one of those unexpected occurrences that happened on a somewhat regular basis in the wintertime.  I can remember having a run of two or three days when it got that cold and we'd have to wait to do the dishes.  We'd keep stacking them up on the counter and with fingers crossed, sooner or later the sink drain would thaw out with the sun's warmth.  Mom would boil big pots of water on the stove to pour into the sink and try to expedite the process.  Funny, I can still remember the sound that the drain would make when at long last it would open up.  Didn't take long for Mom to get us kids into the kitchen and we'd quickly get to work at washing and drying a half dozen meals' worth of dirty dishes.  The Scott Family had no fancy dishwasher from a big department store to use after every meal.  I remember once asking her why we never had a dishwasher like I'd heard several of my friends at school tell of.  Mom's answer that day is stored up in my memory.  Eight short words that said it all.

"We do have a dishwasher.  Seven of them."

And that was that.

     The older that I have become, it seems the more that I remember about those times so long ago.  Things like the simple act of water drizzling from a faucet in the dead of winter trigger a whole lot of memories.  I find it pretty fascinating to think of how the human brain does all that.  I have made more than a couple of remembrances in the nearly 6 decades of life that I have been around on this great planet Earth.  Many of them have involved winter and its accompanying cold weather.

     There was the "frozen tundra" of the upstairs bedrooms of our house out in the country, the one we lived in as I was growing up.  You had to hustle in the winter time to get yourself dressed for bed and under the covers before frostbite would want to set in (ok, ok it probably wasn't that bad).  Waiting in the cold weather for the school bus to pick us up at the end of our lane, sometimes for a long time, was an every day occurrence for the kids in my family.  The embarrassment of having to put socks over your cold little hands when you had lost your gloves was yet another.  Mom was a stickler on that.  You started the winter season with a warm hat and gloves and if you should happen to accidently misplace them, well you used a pair of socks until you found them.  It seemed horrible at the time but hey, it sure cured you from being careless with your things.

     My memories are a mixture of a lot things, some good and some of the "not so good" kind.  Regardless, I am thankful for each of them because for "better or worse" they have shaped me into the kind of person that I am today.  I have been blogging my own personal recollections for a long time now and by the end of this year I will have approached the 1,000th blog post made.  It has been a good experience for me to write down the things that have had an effect upon the life that I have lived.  I never started doing this with the intent of going this far.  Now that I have, I find no real reason to quit doing so.  One day when I actually do bring this to a close I will print off all of my weekly entries and put them away for the day that I am no longer here.  Perhaps it shall bring comfort to my children and grandchildren in the years ahead to read about a woman who loved them each very much.

     Amazing thing about the human brain and its ability to store away things from years past.  The dear and special people that we have known, the happy and loving moments that we have all encountered are tucked deep inside the crevices of our "gray matter" and when we least expect it, they come to "light" again within our most human of hearts.

She didn't freeze to death by sleeping in a cold bedroom upstairs in the wintertime.  She only thought that she would.