A little more Gratitude

OK, A LOT more gratitude. It's -50 in Minnesota tonight. I love where I live. Not just for the mountains. But also, because this afternoon I stood in the sunshine In short sleeves and thought "It's kind of chilly out, guess I should throw this on" and I put on a jacket that I didn't even wear once last winter because it would have been too thin. And I put on a hat and scarf as well, but just as I was reaching for the gloves in my pocket, I thought, "hmmm, it's actually a little warm for that" so I left them in my pocket. I only left the hat and scarf on because they look cute. And now I sit in my house still in a t-shirt reading the blogs of my Minnesota friends, thinking about gratitude. I have not once this winter been paralyzed by the wind. I remember the way it cut through my non-PETA-approved-Fox-fur-lined-down-filled-knee-length coat as I stood on train platforms or outside for recess, or even as I bolted from house to car in -45 windchill at 5am just to teach a seminary class full of other people who were, like me, not only physically frozen from the cold, but emotionally as well. (Side note, How do you like that sentence? It is extremely tempting to continue it, but edit I must!) My car starts in the morning, without complaint, and I don't have to let it run for 10 mintues before putting it in gear. It defrosts as I drive, and I have only turned the heat on when driving for more than 30 miles. (Oh yeah, I got the heat fixed in my car a couple weeks ago. It happened in the midst of hospitals and funerals.) But running the car without heat did not kill me or even give me frostbite or hypothermia. Sometimes, some of the parents of my students say something like "We better zip you up, it's cold out there!" and I laugh at them. Out loud. And then I realize that 15 degrees is cold here. And I am grateful again. One parent, who grew up not far from Warroad, recently returned to visit his hometown. (Although why anyone would return to Northern MN for a funeral in December is beyond me. You could just toss the deceased out back and they would stay perfectly preserved until May, in time for the ground to thaw so you could actually bury them. Just cover them with a tarp, it'll keep the frostbite off.) Anyways, he told me after his buddy's car broke down on the highway to Crookston in -30 with windchill, and they had to thumb a ride on that forsaken road at 3am, that he used to think he would prefer -30 instead of 100+ in the winters. He changed his mind that night. And he offered me a kindly, but unncessary warning. "Don't go back, not in December or January or February. Just don't go. Its as bad as you remember. It's worse than you remember. You think you remember, but then when you feel it, you really remember, and you'll wish you hadn't. Remembered. Or felt it. Just don't go."

Don't worry. I won't.