Flowing Sap on the Coldest Day of the Year

First thing each winter morning, before my feet hit the cold hardwood, before I peel back the covers, or even grope through my eyesight's fog for glasses, I reach blindly for my phone. I turn it on, poised near the bridge of my nose, and make two finger-taps. Thus opens the TWC weather app and I observe: first the current circumstance outside my window, second the forecast for the next ten hours, and lastly the prediction for the upcoming week. I need to prepare my mind and body for whatever the universe holds beyond my down comforter and plush sheets. I live in New York, where the sun shines 10% of the entire year, summers are mostly lukewarm, winters change from Springlike to below zero in a matter of hours, and I'm fairly certain the majority of locals are vitamin D deficient and scraping by in a gloomy stupor of depression 90% of the year. That's why I need some first-thing-in-the-morning mental preparation for each gray beginning.

This morning, however, (despite the fact that the windchill gave us a reading of -27) it didn't matter, because today is PTB's birthday.

It's fortunate for me that the boy of my dreams was born in January. This January day is my favorite day of the year and therefore the warmest for my heart, which beats rapidly all day in celebration of his existence and my fortune in finding him in this wide world. That boy, he is my best and closest friend. His transcendental presence is like a snug blanket, the kind I never want to shed. It does not matter that the mercury negatively hovers, or that beautiful frost patterns grace the window of my storm door well into and past the afternoon, or that news anchors are crying "vortex!" "vortex!" and we're making frigid history. I hardly give space in my mind for worries about bursting pipes, frost-bitten chicken feet, failed engines, or worse. I might as well dwell in the hemisphere down under. It really makes no differences to how warm I am on a day such as my boy's birthday. Today, his transcendental presence is ever present.


Sent from my iPhone