The calendar may still say autumn, but in actuality Old Man Winter has already belted us in the chops with a blast of bitterly cold temperatures. In fact, today’s high was 4+ and the wind chills around here were all the way down to 25 below zero. . . and that was in the middle of the day. But the weatherman promises tomorrow’s high to be a more civilized 19 degrees and Saturday’s high should be a downright balmy 29 degrees. Let the heat wave begin!
This morning as I stood in line in Walgreen’s to buy my second pair of winter gloves in the last two days (only to find the supposedly first pair about a half hour later) I found myself thinking about an extremely scary thing which happened to me 43 years ago. . . something which could have ended catastrophically and profoundly changed who I was and what I would go on to do.
I was in first grade in Decorah, Iowa- and it was the coldest day of the year. . . and mom and dad were very careful to tell me that they would pick me up after school so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the bitter cold. But they were a few minutes late (what a shock!) and somehow I got it in my head that I should head out on my own. It might have been okay except that I was carrying some masterpiece that I had finger painted that day and the mittens I was wearing made it impossible to get a good grip on the rolled up paper. So I took off my right mitten just so I could hold on to my painting more securely – and that’s how I walked home. Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
As I recall, it was both terribly cold and windy – and by the time I had reached my neighborhood, it was also snowing – and by that point, mom or dad had already been to West Side School, found that I was gone, and were frantically trying to find me. It wasn’t a terribly long walk- by my calculations, maybe 10 blocks – but for a first grader on a day like that, wearing one mitten, that was way too long- and by the time my folks finally found me, I was two blocks from my house and I knew I was in some trouble. . . with my right hand was basically frozen solid. I don’t know if it was literally frozen or not, but that’s how my folks always characterized it – and it was bad enough that they raced me across town to our doctor’s office (and depending on what the doctor said, the hospital ER was right across the street) without even stopping at home.
I have two vividly potent memories from that day. One of them is of the intense pain i felt in the moment when my hand was plunged into what felt like a bowl of scalding water. (I’m sure it wasn’t hot water at all, but it just felt like it to my damaged hand.) The other memory which is even more powerfully burned into my mind is from a few minutes earlier: the moment when I caught sight of our car in the distance, maybe a block from me. At least I hoped it was our car (and it was.) It was the moment when I knew I was going to be all right- although I had no way of knowing that my foolishness might have led to irreparable injury to my hand.
My wife gives me a hard time about how paranoid I get in the dead of winter when it gets cold outside…. and of how quick I am to don thermal underwear and thermal socks as though I were about to hike across Alaska. I’m not sure but I suspect that my fear of the cold might stem from this scare I had back in first grade, when I learned first hand how dangerous cold can be, especially when we foolishly disregard its danger.
I’m glad to be thinking about this incident right now because the next few days are among the my busiest of the year, as i spend literally hours on end rehearsing with students for their upcoming juries. Generally by the time I’m into my seventh or eighth hour of rehearsal I start to regret that I ever took piano lessons! But then I will think back to that scary day 43 years ago when my right hand was frozen to the point where I could not move my fingers even a little bit – and I will give thanks that I have two healthy hands with which to dance across the keyboard.
pictured above: This is a photo of our backyard which I took tonight – and I am amazed at how similar it is to the lifeless landscape of the moon.