An extra blanket...

I know I am beating the whole subject of summertime over and over in the head but it is a subject that fascinates me, charms me, enchants me with joy and carelessness. I have looked forward to it all year. So last night I watched 'Taxi' as Joel drank red wine and we laughed the way we did when we were children. Joel inherited the largest portion of our mom's paranoid neurosis so he anxiously asked me if red wine was OK to drink. "Is it really good for your heart? Well which kind of red wine should you drink? Does it make a difference? Calories? What? Deeni! Does it have more calories than beer?"

Fortunately after a few sips he was blushing and laughing and it felt like we were kids laughing all over again, cackling at Louie DePalma and James Ignatowsky.

Then I realized I couldn't really leave the window wide open anymore. Last night it was nearly three quarters of the way closed. And... I had to add an extra blanket; an afghan Becky Swan knitted for us in 1988. Blankets were a must in my house in the mid 80s to early 90s. Intent on saving every dime imaginable, my mom would forestall turning on the heater until mid-December. I remember one morning in December ambling down the hallway early in the morning, sleep-drunk and unwilling to get ready for the school day I saw a foggy, chilly mist was hovering two feet above the floor. I was 14 and had grown accustomed to being poor so I thought it was kind of romantic. It reminded me of the scene in Doctor Zchivago when Yuri and Lara break into the abandoned house in the snow, like a frozen fairy tale palace in white. I wondered, as I made my way to the kitchen, if I would one day have a dark haired poet like Yuri write me a love poem in December with shivering fingers in tattered gloves. Lara crept up behind him in her long white shift, golden hair tousled from sleep, and wept at his words. I wondered if her tears turned to ice in the cold. I have memorized that scene when I was 8 and it stays with me all the time.

But we needed the blankets, as many as we could have... in my frozen house...So last night realizing the weather has been telling me that the summer is nearing it's demise, I pulled on this old afghan Sister Becky Swan from our congregation had knitted in 1988. It was a gorgeous, dreamy peach color when she first presented it to us at the Kingdom Hall. It seemed so fancy. We never wanted to use it and it remained folded gently at the foot of mom's bed. I have it now. The yarn has faded from glowing peach to a pale beige...Faded, sturdy and very warm...sometimes it reminds me a lot of me...