It's Cold Outside

In my life I've been subjected to two types of winter: that of the
North American South and that of the North American Rocky Mountains. I
think sometimes that it would be nice to have some polar experience -
the igloos, the guiltless fur-wearing, the greasy fat around my lips -
but then I regain control. It's hard, regaining control, because it
means you have to deny all those snowflakes of what-if hitting your
cheeks while you sit and sit and sit.

In the South snow falls and entire industries come to rest. People are
sent home; children race towards the unlikely deathtraps of school
buses; the news is full of barely contained excitement over an old man
frozen in his back yard. Is there anything like coming inside to warm
your hands by the stove knowing that nothing matters but the freak
newness of outside?

In the mountain desert it's different. Old men will sit and rest,
knowing it's not the end. Their wives will stoke the stove and warn
grandchildren about snow angels. "Rest there too much," they'll say,
"And you'll be one yourself." People have two sets of clothes in the
desert: Daily and emergency. They don't admit which is which when
you're caught going through their closets. They're just proud to know
the difference, proud of the sand in the pockets.

I know the difference. I'm tired of knowing the difference. This is
what I'm thinking as I stare at my mother's knees, both of them covered
in the scabs and purplish clots of a woman who is equally lost in both
the rare tinkling snow of Southern winters and the icy chills of sandy
foothills. She is lost even though she's the very reason I know the
difference between the two. Lost without her hat, her boots. A driver
to take her hand. An immigrant maid who makes her favorite brioche. A
plane ticket to neither here nor there.

She is the one who taught me how to sit.

I think sometimes that I am glad. I am wrong. In my mother's scabby
knees are the swamps and dunes of places I'm supposed to remember. In
this chilly room of tasteless curtains and white nurses, her injuries
are what they are. It's not enough that her purse is within arm's
reach, a promise well beyond these sanitary four walls. It's not enough
that I could slip her checkbook between my fingers and leave here
forever. It's not even enough that it's an empty promise. It's snowing
outside, and I am tired of trying to imagine the future: What it would
mean to leave here and compare it to the here and now.

Immediacy is a funny thing. If the Devil came to me and asked, "Her
knees or her vanity?", I'd be hard-pressed to answer. I'd question what
he meant, want specifics. I'd picture my mother in a dress she hates,
one that falls below her once shapely knees to hide this present. I'd
wonder, "What's the difference?"

"Because it's just so cold outside," she'll tell guests when they ask.
I decide the men will be disappointed; the women will question the cut
of their own dresses. "It's just so damn cold."

"Oh, you," they'll say, shaking their snow on the foyer floor.