Insulation

Winters, growing up in Maine, weren’t as cold as they are now. The snow began to fall in December, well before Christmas, and it stayed on the ground ‘till March, April even, or May; we wondered if Easter would be snow-free, the snow turning to mud, Spring’s usual arrival in Maine. And as the temperatures fell, sweatshirt weather changed to winter coats and hats, scarves and mittens, armor against the freezing cold. But those childhood winters, long ago winters growing up, weren’t as cold as winters today, these adult winters we endure. Perhaps snow insulates children, as snow piled around a house was thought to insulate somehow, keep out the cold, keep in the warmth, keep in the heat.

Snow, scooped and shoveled high along the edges of the driveway or blown high in a snowy mist, pulled the neighborhood kids out into the cold those youthful days on New Meadows Road. Thus suited up tight, as we were, in coats and hats, scarves and mittens, we built our forts on either side of the driveway, plowed and cleared now, a no-man’s land between us. Our woolen mittens quickly became wet and stretched, and our hats, wet, too, and stretched, we pulled low over our ears, or stuffed them into our pockets, fearing their loss and our mothers’ warnings. We didn’t feel the cold, though, not in our insulated childhood, as we dug and piled the snow banks higher, fashioning forts and arsenals, store houses of snow balls, weapons to be lobbed across the driveway at our winter-time enemies, rivals who claimed the other side of the drive as theirs, just as we claimed this side as ours. Oblivious to the cold and wet, or perhaps not caring, we dug our igloos and tunnels, caves and caverns in the snow packed hard by melting and freezing and childhood bodies, digging deep with our mittened hands. Deeper and deeper we dug till our sheltered cavern collapsed – it always collapsed - our snow covered bodies emerging amid our laughter, white on blue and yellow snowsuits, our hats and mittens snow encrusted, yet we were warm, insulted, and safe.

And insulted still, in childhood, we climbed, then, single file, a snowy trail forming from our boot-prints digging in, to the top of the hill, a big field of snow descending below us, flattening out across the swamp and into the cow pasture beyond. We dragged our sleds and saucers, dented, handles broken, and our long toboggans to be loaded, piled on, teams of kids competing, the air loud with our taunts and boasting, kids crunched together, legs astraddle and feet hooked together, in front of another kid astraddle and hooked together, six kids, eight kids, linked, a human chain, and with a push and a shove to gain momentum, our mittened hands digging in, we propelled as one body of eight forward and down, dashing, rocketing, a controlled control-less-ness; and the toboggan tipped and slipped, slid and careened till our bodies spilled out, laughing and falling, tumbling, hats and mittens and bodies strewn across the snow, jumping up to chase the sled continuing downhill in the cold air of a winter afternoon, insulated by our youth.

But now this cold we feel on a winter’s day, our older bodies bundled up, gloved and scarved, hatted, ear-muffed, grumbling, with fresh snow falling, fallen, building up, piling up, and our shovels scraping as we bend and lift and bend and lift, the cold seeping through to our fingers tingling and raw, lifting and bending, again and again, our backs aching, our fingers cold, our toes cold and consuming what heat we can generate in this lifting and bending, this rhythmic chore of shoveling, our time consumed and slipping away, uninsulated adults shoveling to leave, to work, to join others shoveling, too, bending and lifting, this uninsulated necessity of adulthood; the cold is colder now than we remember.

But in remembering then, as we do now, remembering when the winter, growing up, wasn’t as cold, we find now a different warmth, a new heat, for there’s something to be said for the insulation of childhood on a winter’s day, remembering.