David Murdock Column: On feeling cold, like the weather lately
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If y’all haven’t noticed it lately, it’s cold. It’s been colder in a way that I’ve never before quite experienced. Even though the thermometers in the house ― it seems every digital clock has one these days ― all read a comfortable temperature … I still feel cold. Cold to the bones.
It’s almost like one of my beloved mystery novels, those mystery novels with a puzzle I’d never really been able to solve. No matter how “obvious” the writer seems to think the solution is, those solutions are never obvious to me. The temperature lately has been like that — the solution is obvious enough, but I cannot quite solve it.
It’s because I don’t want to face the solution: I’m getting older.
There’s a timeworn proverb: “The older, the colder,” or, in less pithy terms, “the older one grows, the colder one feels.” One sense of the word “timeworn” is (to quote the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary) “worn or impaired by time.” However, that old proverb is not “impaired” in any way; it’s just that I’m now discovering the truth of it in a way that I didn’t formerly know.
When I was a kid, I loved cold weather — absolutely adored it. I couldn’t wait for the mercury to begin to fall. There was something invigorating about the cold. And the possibility of snow? Oh, wow! Only Christmas brought more anticipation.
Nowadays, even the possibility of snow is a hassle. Get to the grocery store and buy milk, bread, butter, and eggs before everybody else buys all of them. The reality of snow? All I think of all during a snow day is how I’m going to make up the class time that we missed. Yes, I do love the beauty of snow … for maybe 15 minutes.
And one more thing … when I was young, I wanted to be older.
Aging has its benefits. The other side of the proverb is that I’m only just now discovering how delightful warmth is. I don’t think I truly appreciated the luxury of warmth ― even when I ran I ran into the house to warm up between building the small snowmen that a light snowfall allows. I say “light snowfall” because that’s what we usually get in Alabama … except for 1993! That amount of snow allowed for proper snowmen. Even then, I was already in my 20s, and I spent more time inside than out.
Lately, however, in this bleak, bone-chilling cold, I’ve experienced warmth in a way I never have ― it’s almost like I’ve discovered it for the first time. I almost understand now why retirees move to Florida. It has not gotten quite that cold for me yet, but I understand it.
There’s something else I “get” now that I’m not sure I did before — the phrase, “a biting cold.” There’s quite a difference in understanding something in one’s head and understanding something in one’s heart. With my acknowledgement that I am getting older, and obviously more sensitive to cold weather, I honestly believe that it has been colder recently.
Simply put, I don’t remember so bleak a winter, such raw cold. The sky has largely been gray for a while now, the wind has been unrelenting, and the humidity has been high.
A couple of times when I’ve stepped outside, the bitter wind has taken my breath. So, I know in my head what such bitter cold is like. It’s not like literature and history doesn’t provide descriptions of such cold — John Keats, Christina Rossetti, and William Shakespeare all wrote vivid descriptions of such cold. A book I once read called the first stanza of Keats’s "The Eve of St. Agnes," “the coldest stanza in English poetry,” ― I remember the phrase, but not the book.
Now I know such cold in my heart.
And here’s the thing: I must have experienced such cold before. I simply didn’t take notice of it like I do now.
The other thing? It doesn’t take much to dispel this cold. Yesterday, it was bright and sunny for a few hours. Even though the temps were about the same, it felt so much warmer that I shed my heaviest outer layer and sorta basked in the sun for a few minutes. It was still cold, windy, and damp … but it didn’t feel like it at all.
That’s why I’m not too upset about getting older. It’s a whole new experience … every single day. Something about it has caused me to begin to experience the world almost hour-by-hour, in a way I never have. I used to wish that I was older; now I wish that I could experience this exact age I am fully, in all the ways of “experiencing” it. Growing older is many things — it’s mostly a grand adventure.
When I’m feeling sorta ridiculous, I sometimes wonder what it would have been like back when I was younger to have fully experienced physical sensations like the cold in a way I now do. I’ve lost that time. Maybe I’ve become more sensitive to sensations like cold because I’m making up for that lost time.
In those same ridiculous “can-never-happen” moods, though, I do sometimes wish it just weren’t so very biting, bone-chilling cold.
David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions expressed are his own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock on the weather lately and feeling colder
